Naughty Canine: Our First PC Launch Is a Transformative Pivot Level; Right here’s Why We Didn’t Launch the Nathan Drake Assortment
On: October 20, 2022
At the moment, PC avid gamers are handled to the primary Naughty Canine to ever grace the platform. For these unfamiliar with Naughty Canine, the corporate was based practically forty years in the past as JAM Software program earlier than altering the identify to its present one in 1989.
Naughty Canine rose to fame with Crash Bandicoot, launched for the unique PlayStation in 1996. The game’s success spawned a whole franchise (and even spin-offs like Crash Workforce Racing), persuading writer Sony Laptop Leisure to buy the corporate in 2001.
At that time, the PlayStation 2 had launched, and Naughty Canine switched to a model new IP: Jak & Daxter. After three installments and one other spin-off racing game, Naughty Canine was as soon as once more prepared to maneuver on to one thing totally totally different and extra critical: Uncharted.
The remainder is historical past. Whereas their earlier franchises had been greater than profitable, Uncharted propelled the Santa Monica-headquartered studio into one other league totally. It’s, subsequently, no coincidence that Naughty Canine is now dipping its toes into the PC gaming pool with this franchise.
Commenting on the discharge of Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Assortment for PC, the builders additionally defined why they ignored the primary three video games (now obtainable as The Nathan Drake Assortment bundle on PS4).
When contemplating what to debut on PC with, we appeared by our catalog and determined the attractive, globetrotting tales of the UNCHARTED sequence felt like a pure match to introduce to gamers all all over the world. Now, you might be questioning why we didn’t begin with the unique UNCHARTED. We felt that, whereas Nathan Drake’s first three adventures from the PlayStation 3 console nonetheless stand the take a look at of time narratively, they’d require a significant overhaul visually to face as much as trendy PC releases and the expectations gamers might have.
Naughty Canine additionally talked concerning the PC launch of Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Assortment as a transformative pivot level for the corporate, setting the phases for future releases on each PC and PlayStation as per Sony’s plans.
The UNCHARTED sequence’ PC debut is each thrilling and reflective, an opportunity for us to take the teachings realized about providing our video games on a brand new platform and the expectations and alternatives that go together with it. In studying a lot by our companions at Iron Galaxy, we’re in a position to look forward to the way forward for Naughty Canine video games on PC extra excitedly than ever.
At first, we realized, notably by our partnership, what it takes to convey our personal engine to parity to ship on PC {hardware}. UNCHARTED 4 and UNCHARTED: The Misplaced Legacy are already stunning video games in their very own right, and we needed to keep up that high quality within the PC launch.
The PC area can be one that gives customers a ton of flexibility in {hardware} specs, controls, and extra. As we’ve primarily solely ever needed to concentrate on contemplating one or two system specs previously, this was merely eye-opening for us. Having primarily developed for console controllers, we needed to be taught concerning the preferences and adaptability keyboard and mouse controls provide, and we discovered that we needed to re-evaluate sure game mechanics to suit the brand new enter strategies.
We additionally wanted to account for the variability of PC {hardware} because it pertains to knowledge loading, and so we reworked our engine so as to add a “security valve” of kinds to make sure a clean gameplay expertise throughout numerous PC specs.
Studying all of this by our partnership with Iron Galaxy Studios solely helps to bolster Naughty Canine’s understanding of PC improvement, and permit us to ship the standard you count on in our future releases. We’re excited to offer The Final of Us Half I on PC sooner or later, and know that, moving ahead, including PC improvement to the best way we develop video games, which by no means undermines the significance of PlayStation 5 as our major platform, will proceed to profit our workforce in the long term.
UNCHARTED: Legacy of Thieves Assortment’s PC launch is a transformative pivot level for Naughty Canine. We not solely have one other probability to have fun our beloved franchise but in addition introduce it to so many new gamers. In doing so, we set the stage for Naughty Canine to ship high-quality video games on PlayStation 5, with the choice of a PC launch as effectively, with an understanding of the right way to cater to the totally different wants of each audiences now and sooner or later.
The PC launch of The Final of Us, arguably Naughty Canine’s finest franchise, should not be far off. Keep tuned to get all the most recent updates.
