Days Gone maker working on new IP, says PlayStation Studios boss

Bend Studio, the maker of 2019’s Days Gone for PlayStation 4, is developing “a very exciting new IP” in lieu of a sequel to the biker gang/zombie survival adventure.

That comes from Hermen Hulst, the head of PlayStation Studios, in an interview posted to the PlayStation Blog on Wednesday (in which Hulst also said the next God of War game is delayed to 2022).

Hulst didn’t offer (nor was he asked for) specifics about Bend’s new game, but did say the studio is “building on the deep open-world systems that they developed for Days Gone.” His remarks effectively confirm information from an April report from Bloomberg about Sony’s first-party video games development, in which Bend Studio was said to be working on a new game after its pitch for a Days Gone sequel was shot down in 2019.

Days Gone was a commercial success but a critical cipher, and the lack of strongly positive reviews meant that a PlayStation Studios leadership group fixated on hits gave a thumbs-down for any sequel. The game still has a loyal fan base, evinced by an online petition with more than 115,000 signatures pleading for a second chapter. Days Gone was also recently ported to Windows PC, becoming the third PS4 exclusive to get a PC version in the past year.

Bend Studio, founded in Oregon almost 30 years ago and owned by Sony since 2000, has one other franchise to its name: stealth shooter Syphon Filter, whose most recent entry was 2007’s Syphon Filter: Logan’s Shadow for PlayStation 2. Since then, other than developing Days Gone, the studio has assisted on other PlayStation tentpoles, delivering PlayStation Portable and PlayStation Vita adaptations of Insomniac Games’ Resistance series and Naughty Dog’s Uncharted franchise between 2009 and 2012.

Hulst, a co-founder of Horizon Zero Dawn and Killzone maker Guerrilla Games (and formerly its managing director), took over PlayStation Studios’ leadership from Shuhei Yoshida in November 2019.