Uncharted 3 devs "terrified" by PlayStation 4

While the gaming community may be waiting with bated breath for any snippets of info on a potential PlayStation 4 games console from Sony, one of the PS3’s brightest development teams are starting to sweat at the prospect of new hardware.

Naughty Dog, the team behind the superb Uncharted series on the PS3, are worried that the transitional period will be particularly tough for them, with studio co-president Evan Wells stating that it could be a “double-edged sword.”

“The geek inside you is always excited about a shiny new toy, but then the practicality of it starts to set in: this is going to be a lot of hard work,” Wells told Eurogamer.

“When you’re going to new technology, every day is a slog, progress is slow and it really takes a different kind of attitude and mentality to get through that kind of push and it’s not right for everybody.”

Wells recalls the transitional period between the PS2 and PS3 console as Naughty Dog’s “darkest days”.

“We lost people on a weekly basis,” Wells remembers. “People just couldn’t get through it”.

Co-president Christophe Balestra took it a step further, calling the idea of starting work on a new console “terrifying”.

“We made some mistakes with our move from PS2 to PS3,” he said, “and we won’t make those again. I guess we’ve done it a couple of times!” said Balestra.

Since wrapping up on Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, Naughty Dog have split off in to two teams. One has set to work on the post-apocalyptic action-adventure The Last of Us, while the second team’s project has yet to be revealed by Wells.

“Right now they’re not working that much. Some of them are working mainly on DLC for multiplayer, and a lot of them are on vacation,” he said. “I think the team’s going to regroup and we’re going to figure out what’s going to be the next move for that team. Next-gen, current-gen – that’s totally in the air.”