God of War has long been the crown jewel in PlayStation’s library, a series consistently regarded as exceptional for nearly two decades. But it’s also the only thing Sony Santa Monica has worked on during that time, relegating the developer to Sony’s God of War studio. However, it looks like that might change in the near future, as details from a developer’s LinkedIn profile suggest the studio is working on its first new IP since the release of the original God of War in 2005.
As spotted by a ResetEra member, a developer at Sony Santa Monica noted in their “about” section on LinkedIn that they were “looking after an entire Character Development pipeline, on their new IP.” The developer in question worked as a character artist on God of War and Ragnarok, before leaving for Striking Distance to work on The Callisto Protocol.
While we don’t know any further details, this is a pretty momentous occasion for Santa Monica. The studio was founded in 1999 by Allan Becker, a longtime Sony employee. Its first game, a sci-fi racer called Kinetica, released on PlayStation 2 in 2001. The studio then shifted to work on God of War with David Jaffe.
While God of War has maintained a consistently high bar of quality, it’s undeniable that Santa Monica getting the chance to work on something new is a good thing. Not only does it provide the developers a chance to do something different, but it could provide Sony with a big break that it desperately needs at this moment.
The PS5 has seen first-party releases slow to crawl, and that’s never been more clear. The only things we’re seeing from first-party this year, that we know of, are Helldivers 2, Concord, Astro Bot, and Lego Horizon Adventures. Sony has, of course, partnered with third parties to put out the exclusives like Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and Stellar Blade, but it’s hard to look at the company’s lineup and not feel worried, especially when the PS5 should really be hitting its stride right now.
Sony has been banking on a huge live service push that hasn’t panned out all that well, with delays and problems during development. We’ve also recently seen Bungie, which has a partnership with Sony, announce a wave of layoffs. There’s a real lack of big single-player experiences, which has traditionally been Sony’s bread-and-butter over the last two generations. Games like Uncharted, God of War, inFamous, and Spider-Man, have become synonymous with the PlayStation brand.
Hopefully, Santa Monica getting the chance to work on a big new IP might be a return to that sensibility. We even already have an example of how effective launching big new IP with a legacy studio can be, with Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima or Guerilla’s Horizon. Both studios had been working on the same franchises for years, but when given the chance to branch out and do something wildly different, they hit a home run.
The Last of Us studio Naughty Dog is also working on a new IP at the moment, and Sony giving both Naughty Dog and Santa Monica the chance to work on something new is, hopefully, a step in the right direction and a sign that the company is reinvesting in the kind of experiences that got them here in the first place.
With video games as a whole right now we’re consistently seeing more sequels, more live-service shooters, and games simply iterating on ideas that have come before. As beloved as series like God of War are, fresh experiences are what video games as a whole desperately need right now, new ideas that push the envelope and innovate, or do something we’ve never seen before.
