I wouldn't be surprised if ND turns out to have 3 team in a 2 year period....
ND has 236 employees on linkedin, probably more. I can see them having a 3rd team if TLOU/Uncharted 4/New IP come out to critical acclaim and sales. I would guess the 3rd team would be smaller and mainly make PSN/Vita/Mobile titles though.
I reckon most of the studios that have 2 teams will eventually combine into 1 team. For example once Naughty Dog finishes Last of Us, they will help Uncharted 3 team on the PS4 project. Same with GoW:A team, Tearaway team, Guerilla Cambridge, Beyond team and etc.
Having 2 teams != being completely separate, people move around all the time. Mainly the directors and the people designing the game will stay on one team, but the programmers, artists, animators, etc will all get moved to help with a particular game whenever they are needed.
Sony should look at investing in Japan. This is their first party studio split:
US:
SCE Santa Monica
Naughty Dog
Sucker Punch
SCE San Diego
SCE Bend
EU:
SCE London
Guerrilla Games
Guerilla Cambridge
Evolution Studios
Media Molecule
Novarama
JP:
SCE Japan Studio
Polyphony Digital
(I'm kind of surprised that they don't have a Canadian studio given the tax grants here)
There's a reason why many Japanese third parties doesn't consider SCE to be a Japanese publisher anymore.
I don't think Novarama is 1st party, I believe they have an exclusive contract a la Tarsier and Double Eleven. I'm also surprised they don't have a canadian studio. I think their next acquisitions, if any, will be one of the 3 I mentioned above, QD, and/or RaD, depending on financials and how well their games do.
Japan is extremely though, who could they buy there? Clap Hanz should have been brought in to SCEWWS already, Nippon Ichi and Game Arts might be cheap and worthy purchases for niche games. Platinum or Marvelous (and similar sized developers) might be a worthy purchase depending on price and what they have to offer. From Software? Too expensive just for armored core IP (SCE owns Demon's Souls and Dark Souls IP is co owned with Namco). Atlus? Might be too expensive for just persona and smt games. Level 5? Way too expensive for games in series that are in decline, should have bought them long ago, during the PS2 days. Sega is rumored to be on the selling block and SE has been having financial trouble, after FFXIV v2.0 bombs, they will be worth even less. To get a majority (and controlling) share in either, Sony would have to invest at least the same amount they invested in Olympus or more (JPY50 billion). Given Sony's current financial situations and what they had to do to invest in Olympus and buy Gaikai, I just don't see that happening.
The situation in Japan for Sony is critical, but SCEJ is to blame, only recently they started their western IPs, Uncharted 3 outsold Uncharted 2 and Uncharted 1 LTD combined and GOWIII (first GOW game published by SCEJ, before it was published by Capcom) outsold GOW and GOW2 combined. They would need to have an in-house development studio that creates games for the JP market, including big budget games. If Marvelous and Inafune do go on to produce Dark Sacrifices for 3DS, then what? SCEJ can't make it themselves as they have shown with a lack of Demon's Souls 2 without From and Miyazaki. Not sure how they can fix their JP situation, but I wish them luck.
- Guerilla Games - Killzone 4 (PS3)
- Sucker Punch - inFamous 3 (PS3)
Highly unlikely. After GOWA, Beyond, and TLOU, I think all major SCEWWS games will be on PS4. The exception being MLB The Show which will be on PS3 for the next 3-4 years or so