Sony's Potential Unannounced Exclusives

Sony announced a lot of stuff in their long E3 conference such as Zipper’s MAG and Bend’s Resistance Retribution but is there more they are not showing us? Sony has acquired a lot of studio over the past ten years and not all of them have produce games since acquisition, what is going on? Are they hiding something from the gamers? Will we see more in TGS?

Clap Hanz – Maker of Hot Shots Series, will we see Hot Shots Tennis on the PS3? Clap Hanz have yet to announce their next game since the release of their Hot Shots Golf last year. It’s been a year according to the Japanese time-line, what are the teams working on now? Will they stay true to their favorite series or will they innovate? We may see something in TGS 2008.

Team Ico – Ok, we know it’s coming, but we have yet to see anything other than that one full page Famitsu ad and some funky high def screenshot of a dungeon looking stage. More detail in TGS please!!

Incognito – Founded in 1999 and acquired at the turn of the last decade, the maker of Warhawk has yet to release or show another game since the inception of Warhawk. The team may have been downsized since the days of David Jaffe and now a functional part of Santa Monica studio, but come on, you tell me for the past year they have done nothing but updating new maps and modes for Warhawk? I don’t believe it. Give me a new Jet Moto or Twisted Metal Next Gen, or are you helping on the development of God of War?

Naughty Dog – 85 employee strong team, founded in 1986, acquired by Sony in 2001. The maker of Uncharted Drake’s Fortune; rumors has it that they are working on Uncharted 2. I would like to see this studio expand and take on both Uncharted and Jak at the same time just like Insomniac took on both Ratchet and Resistance!

BigBig Studio – Acquired along with Evolution Studio in September 2007, BigBig has yet to step up to release schedule since the inception of Pursuit Force for the PSP, what games are they working on??

SCE London Studio – You are looking at Sony’s biggest internal development studio with 250+ employees sitting in air conditioned 7 story building for the past 3 years. The only thing they have released was SingStar which is a low-budget, non-program intensive game (It’s still a good game), but can you imagine 250 dudes sitting in a building for 3 years trying to make something but hasn’t produced any results? With Get Away and Eight Days canned, this team must be doing something that they are not telling us.

SCE Studio Cambridge – Acquired in 1997, the last game the maker of MediEvil released was licensed property of 24: The Game for the PS2 in March of 2006. It’s been a while since we heard anything from a team of 90 employees. What is up guys? Where are my games?

SCE Studio Liverpool – Psygnosis was founded in 1984 and acquired by Sony in 1993 in preparation for the release of the first PlayStation to strengthen the first party library. This is one of Sony’s old pillars and has created numerous hit European titles such as F1, Wipeout series. With 100 employees, could they be working only on WipeOut HD? I am not convinced that it takes 2-3 years to create a HD version of Wipeout. They must be in production of another game. We may see it later this year in smaller European gaming events. Not to mention that Sony gave up their F1 license..so we may see something entirely new.

SCE Korea – Nothing much is known about this division, since formation of SCE Korea nothing much have been announced. We will most likely see EyeToy games from these guys as SCE London passes the torch.

Close friends, Second Party Companies. Whatever you want to call them. Here are more spaces to watch out for:

David Jaffe’s Eat Sleep Play- Three exclusive games for Sony, and Twisted Metal they were working on is not considered one of the three exclusives; that means they haven't even announced one yet.

Ted Price’s Insomniac - a new studio in North Carolina is said to make brand new games for Sony. I wonder….

Ready At Dawn – since shipping the PSP dev kits back, we have yet to hear from them. Are they still with us?

Rockstars – What exclusive games awaits, what is Jack Tretton talking about last year???

Level 5 – Sony has lost a lot of friends in this generation, the last big one was Square Enix. Will L-5 show some love? Will Sony acquire them after the release of White Knight Story?

Nippon Ichi – maker of famous Disgaea series, they have about 95% of their production staff on PlayStation platform since day 1, what games will they make next?

Hideo Kojima’s next project – will it be multiplatform? Will the success of MGS4 keep Hideo faithful to the PS3 in its darkest hours? We’ll find out.

Quantic Dream - Developing Heavy Rain for PS3 Exclusively, they also own a strong Mo-Cap studio. Sony likes to diversify and cut cost. Acquisition of QD will do just that.

DiggingTheWeb

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