It seems he was "away" for years. Either him coming back full time is a net negative, or these people who have stepped up have not been sufficient to replace or supersede his value to the studio.
Which leads me to believe Naughty Dog as a studio, and SIE as a publisher is fine with his values. They could very easily remove him as president of the studio or have him be just president and not head of Narrative, but he's kept both of those because they're obviously fine with it.
No? You don't think the embarrassment around Factions 2 is a problem?
Is it a problem? Yes. But games get cancelled all the time. And at most studios they get cancelled when the studio president is working there full time, so I wouldn't put that on him alone.
It won't come out until 2027.
And sorry, it should not track. The game industry is massively inefficient, and it's on Sony and leadership like Druckmann to be proactive in making it more so. Not by taking 7 years on new uninspired IP, 5 years on rehashed sequels and then wasting years of studio time pivoting to live service slop because selling 15-20 million units of these games is "not sustainable".
I wouldn't put the inefficiencies of the games industry on 1 person or studio either. Is 7 years to make a new IP too long? Sure. But that's the reality we live in today.
Cory's game at Santa Monica - a new IP as far as we know - is taking at least the same amount of time, if not longer. Light No Fire at Hello Games has been in development since ~2018, Ken Levine has been working on Judas for like 10 years now, by the time Yotei comes out it will have been 5 years.
And the directors and studio heads at all those studios and games were working on them full time.
So yes, I agree that AAA development takes way too long, but let's not pretend like the new ND game is behind because the director was not working hard enough on it. Whether or not we think it 'should' track is irrelevant. The reality is it does.
Of course, but it's one of the only substantial things we know about the game and it's made out to be some big selling point. 80s nostalgia synth pop, this time done by the guy who's scored more movies than can be counted? Not convincing.
Because it's all they showed. It was a teaser. We're making a lot of assumptions based on a whole lot of nothing. If 80s nostalgia synth pop is not your thing that's fine. It's a fair criticism, but this may be the first time I've seen hate for a game based on the genre of music in the score/soundtrack. We haven't seen a second of gameplay.
They would be very foolish to disregard it, because it will have an impact on sales.
We'll see. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it will not have a noticeable impact on sales.
variety.com
imagine that when they're shitting out Marathon. That I imagine (given how long these ambitious games take) has set them back so long unfortunately.
