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Sony has been assembling a new development team.
The group's next game is unknown, except that it'll be an established PlayStation franchise.
Rumours suggest one IP in particular will be the team's first game.
Sony San Diego
The information comes from the LinkedIn profile of Michael Mumbauer, who used to run Sony's San Diego studio. In his about section, a paragraph mentions that he started a “brand new, all-star, AAA Action/Adventure development team”, based in San Diego, made to expand “existing franchises and craft all new stories”.
This is listed as his “latest achievement”, indicating it was one of the last things he was involved in before exiting Sony in November 2020. The team is apparently separate from the developers working on Sony's other in-house series, God of War and MLB: The Show.
We don't know what games Mumbauer's group will be working on, but a somewhat educated guess points to Uncharted.
In Uncharted waters
Mumbauer's profile seemingly confirms rumours for several years that Sony had another wing of its San Diego game development in the offing. A 2018 video, listed in the featured section of Mumbauer's LinkedIn, covered the secretive team and suggested they were working on Uncharted, replacing Naughty Dog as the IP's main developer.
The last game in the Uncharted series was 2017's Uncharted: Lost Legacy, after which former Naughty Dog co-president Evan Wells called making another Uncharted is “unlikely”. The studio moved on to focus all its efforts on last year's The Last of Us Part 2, which proved to be a smash hit for all involved.
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Mumbauer sharing that video could be a hint that Sony San Diego is taking the reigns on Uncharted, and doing it themselves while Naughty Dog works on The Last Of Us, and other prospective projects.
The Next Generation
Of course, Sony just stepped into the next generation with the PlayStation 5, and many of the fan-favourite series have sequels accounted for. God of War: Ragnarok is in the works, Sackboy: A big Adventure was the return of LittleBigPlanet, and Insomniac's Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is due sometime this year.
By order of elimination, Uncharted seems likely, unless Sony want to really surprise us.
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