Veterans of Naughty Dog Studios, the development company that brought us, most notably, the Crash Bandicoot series, and most recently, Uncharted, have split from Naughty Dog, with ambitions to start their own development studio.
Jason Hughes and Andrew Gilmore have announced that they will be forming Steel Penny Games, a whole new entity that will focus on digital distribution. Though Naughty Dog has historically been a predominantly PlaySation based developer, Steel Penny Games has been said to be focusing on development for the Wiiware platform. No announcements were made as to their plans to distribute via Xbox Live or the PlayStation Network.
Apparently the pair has spent the last year building an engine for use on the Wiiware platform and plan to use this engine to fuel several games across it.
The first game being made by the developers will be an original intellectual property that will be a "challenging puzzle game with dramatic fantasy environments and appealing characters." Sounds to me a bit like they are hoping lightning will strike twice on the Puzzle Quest style game.
Their first game is slated for release sometime in mid-2008.
