Even if that never happened, Bend's Rumored Uncharted Game is a good sign

Of all the first-party developers on PlayStation, Bend Studio is arguably the only company that doesn't get as much recognition as it deserves. The Oregon-based company has been around for 32 years, even longer than the PlayStation brand itself, and yet its portfolio of games isn't quite as highly regarded compared to studios like Sucker Punch, Naughty Dog and Insomniac. Bend Studio originally started making puzzle games for the Apple Newton, but during the PS1 generation it branched out and worked on other projects, such as Siphon filter series. Nowadays, the company is more famous for developing 2019 zombie killing games Days awaywhich was divisive among critics but received positively by fans.

If recent rumors are to be believed, Bend Studios' next game will be a multiplayer military third-person shooter that potentially has GAAS elements. This unclaimed title will apparently be part of a new intellectual property and will not be a follow-up to Siphon filter, SOCOMor any of PlayStation's other older series. The decision to work on a new IP instead of an established franchise after Days gone But may not have always been Bend Studios' intention. The company was reportedly working on a Uncharted game at once, which may not be in development anymore.

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Days Gone The director had ideas for an Uncharted Prequel

After failing to get a sequel to Days Gone greenlit, the director conceived a potential Uncharted prequel centered around a younger Sully in the '70s.

A new Uncharted game was reportedly in development at Bend Studio

Bend Studio was working on new Uncharted and Days Gone games, but both were scrapped

Back in April 2021, rumors swirled that another sequel Days away had been internally shelved due to its predecessor's poor critical reception and grueling development cycle. At the time, Bloomberg's Jason Schreier reported that one of the teams at Bend Studio that worked with Days Gone 2 had shifted focus to developing a new Uncharted games instead. Although Schreier did not report any details about this game, he did reveal that it was still in the planning stages.

Schreier's claims were further corroborated by leaked documents from the 2023 Insomniac hack, which revealed that Bend Studio at one point planned to run a Days away sequel and a Uncharted game. These particular documents were from 2020, and although four years have passed since then, this is mysterious Uncharted the project has not yet been made public. According to Schreier, this is because it was probably cancelled. Because many of the staff at Bend Studio were more interested in creating a new IP instead of another sequel Unchartedthe game never saw the light of day.

Bend Studio has experience with the Uncharted Franchise

If Bend Studio had created a new one Uncharted game, it wouldn't have been the companies' first time working on the famous action-adventure series. The developer has collaborated with fellow Sony subsidiary Naughty Dog on several occasions, creating various Uncharted spin-offs over the years, such as Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Uncharted: Fight for Fortuneand Uncharted: Drake's Trail. It's usually rare for Sony to release its first-party IPs to other developers under the PlayStation umbrella, but Bend Studio was an exception.

Sony may be willing to let other studios work on its older franchises in the future

Perhaps it would benefit Sony to have more of their in-house developers work on the franchises created by their sister studios. For example, it would be great if Insomniac could work on a new main line Notorious game, or if Polyphony Digital was given permission to work on a sixth entry i MotorStorm series.

It's hard to say if hypothetical games like these will ever come to fruition, or if the developers under Sony are even interested in working on franchises they didn't create. That said, the fact that Sony is even willing to let a company like Bend Studio work on a flagship Naughty Dog IP shows that the company is still open to the idea of bringing back franchises without their original creators at the helm. At the very least, it might give some fans hope that Sony will consider reviving its dormant IPs in the same way it supposedly does for Uncharted.

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