Could Staff Changes At Naughty Dog Signal Trouble for Uncharted 4 and Sony?

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It’s no secret that there have been some major changes over at Naughty Dog, and those changes could or could not be signs of turmoil depending on who you’re asking. It seems for now we still do not know if some of these staff changes were forced or just the result of people moving on. First we have Amy Hennig, who was a huge part of the success of the Uncharted series, leaving to work with Visceral Games back in March. Then we have Justin Richmond, the scheduled director for Uncharted 4 who left to help work on League of Legends. And now we have Nate Wells, the Lead Artist on The Last of Us who just confirmed on Twitter he will now be working with The Unfinished Swan developer Giant Sparrow. His tweet can be seen below.

 

 

There’s no official word yet, but this could only be bad news for expectant fans of Uncharted 4. Sony teased Uncharted 4 at the launch event for the PS4 and the expectations for Uncharted 4 are huge. It’s hard to imagine that major staff changes like this won’t have an effect on the development, quality or release date of Uncharted. In fact, combine the Naughty Dog shake ups with the Santa Monica layoffs and you have trouble in two of Sony’s biggest houses. Not long after those layoffs Santa Monica game designer Seth Killian left as well. Perhaps this will all culminate in bigger problems or perhaps it’s something Sony will be able to bounce back from, but either way with E3 coming up it’ll be interesting to see how Sony markets two of its biggest franchises.

What do you think? Are Naughty Dog, Santa Monica and Sony in trouble or will they bounce back with a plan in hand? Let us know in the comments and stay tuned to SpawnFirst for more news.