Wait, so the tlou remake is absolutely official?! I was kinda joking about it...
Why the hell are they wasting time with that when the game already has a fucking remaster?!
It isn't made at Naughty Dog, only some ND guys worked on it. It has been mostly developed in San Diego.
As a personal project -not something mandated by Sony- Mumbauer, a guy from a Sony division that supports most Sony (and non Sony) gamedevs with art, mostly cinematics, created the 2nd Sony San Diego studio with like 20 people of their team with the idea of making CG movies or tv shows for tv and streaming of game IPs (Uncharted, TLOU, GoW...) using the assets they had from cinematics, maybe to bridge and expand stories between games. Sony didn't like it and told them to focus on making games and not movies, because there's another division who makes the movies.
Mumbauer wanted to do their own projects instead of continuing with the supporting role his team had, so decided to try to make their own games from this studio. They already had a ton of assets they stated to make for these pitches and thought a remake would be easier to be greenlighted than a new game, so started to make an Uncharted 1 remake because they had assets. But found the game was too old, that its gameplay needed a ton a big changes and his team was focused on art and lacked people from design and programming, so decided to switch to TLOU1R with the idea of bundling it with TLOU2 PS5 (think the remaster on Morales PS5).
This San Diego studio started to work on it, with obviously someone with ND supporting them to provide some stuff they needed from the original game etc. Time later, Hermen Hulst becomes head of PlayStation Studios. He saw the remake, didn't like it and thought they were spending too much budget compared to similar projects, so asked the new studio and ND to switch their roles: the San Diego guys would go back to their original support role while ND would take the lead of the project to make sure the remake got completed with the proper quality and with a decent budget.
At the same time, Zenimax was opening an studio in San Diego and aggresively tried to hire tons of people from both Sony San Diego studio, hiring part of the remake staff. Mumbauer and a few more also left Sony but to create their own company with his original idea of making CG movies for tv using game assets.
This is more or less what is mentioned in Mumbauer's interview with David Jaffe + some extra stuff mentioned in the Bloomberg article where they said 'Sony is obssessed with blockbusters' where Jason mixed real info leaked with several lies and fud debunked by Mumbauer, Days Gone directors, Jim Ryan and Hermen Hulst.
The TLOUR hasn't been confirmed, but the article mentioned Bend is working on a new IP instead of Days Gone 2 and that ended being true.
Did you miss the whole crunch thing with Naughty Dog leading up to the release of TLOU2 or the part where Sony isn't participating in E3. Either way you set yourself up for that shit.
Sony isn't participating in E3, but they are participating in Summer Game Fest.
Wtf have ND and Bend been doing for the last few years!? During the run up to TLOU2 and all the time since it's release?
Bend:
-Days Gone 2 preproduction and pitch (not greenlighted, at least to develop it right now)
-Helping ND with TLOU2 Factions
-Helping ND with a new Uncharted spinoff (Bend stopped working on it, we don't know if they canned it)
-Days Gone PS5 60 fps patch
-Days Gone PC
-Bend's new IP preproduction and pitch (got greenlighted, now in development)
ND:
-TLOU2 Factions (TLOU2 MP became too ambitious and branched into a new game)
-TLOU2 PS5 60 fps patch
-Uncharted new spinoff with help from Bend (we don't know if canned)
-TLOU2 PS5 version + supporting the San Diego team who has been working on TLOU1R PS5
-Uncharted 4 PC port
-Supporting the tv series
-TLOU3 early preproduction work/first main story draft just to have it ready just in case somewhere in the future they decide to develop it
-Who knows if also working on preproduction for a new IP
-Who knows if also working on Nathan Drake's Collection PS5 patch + PC port and TLOU1&2 PC port
Both teams have been growing a lot and will grow even more this year. They are big, so can work on multiple projects at the same time even if maybe only one of them has a huge amount of people working on it at the same time.