Naughty Dog PS3 project named

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune will be the title of developer Naughty Dog's impressive PS3 jungle-set actioner, which wowed onlookers at E3 last yearwith an exciting trailer and looks to promise a heady blend of shooting, stealthing and platforming thrills.

The previously unreleased title was revealed both in a slew of newly registered Sony patents and on theresumeof Naughty Dog's creative director Daniel Arey, who also works as an instructor for the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts.

The "Drake's Fortune " subtitle refers to the lost silver treasure of Sir Francis Drake, and locates the game in the Caribbean, where Drake had to abandon the fortune in silver he'd commandeered from a raid on a Spanish fleet. And, if you navigate your way tothe game's official site, you can clearly see an olde-worlde map in the background of the page - we reckon Uncharted will cast you as a treasure-hunter looking for Drake's stash, who runs into tooled-up mercs in a Caribbean paradise.

Other patents revealed by anintrepid NeoGaf forumite, include Motor Toon Grand Prix, suggesting Sony will bring the game to the PSNetwork shop; a logo for something called Beats, which sounds like a MySpace or YouTube for music on the Network, promising "wireless transmission of music, video and games ... uploading and downloading ... online bulletin boards"; and Eye3, no doubt the name for PS3's EyeToy peripheral, with the name pointing to other features than just gameplay. Think videocalls and the like.

Sony was unavailable for comment on these revelations, but we'll be nose-to-ground in a truffle-sniffing pig sort of way to hunt out news nuggets relating to Uncharted and Sony's other new patents.

February 6, 2007

Ben Richardson is a former Staff Writer for Official PlayStation 2 magazine and a former Content Editor of GamesRadar+. In the years since Ben left GR, he has worked as a columnist, communications officer, charity coach, and podcast host – but we still look back to his news stories from time to time, they are a window into a different era of video games.