Thatgamecompany to announce new game this year

Journey's thatgamecompany lays plans to announce new game this year

Thatgamecompany will this year debut the first new title since the end of its three-game contract with Sony, studio creative director Jenovah Chen confirmed today.

Speaking to VG247, Chen said the company would decide on a publisher "within the next month."

"It takes us a little bit of time to basically re-adjust after the three game deal [with Sony]," explained Chen. "We're very close in figuring out what the next deal is."

The studio's partnership with Sony reached its conclusion following the release of popular PSN title Journey. Thatgamecompany also worked with the publisher during development on 2007's FlOw and 2009's Flower.

Chen plans to announce the title early, following a studio tradition of announcing games soon after the release of a previous project.

"We announced Flower half a year after we launched FlOw, we announced Journey half a year after we launched Flower. So hopefully within this year, you'll hear from us about our next game."

Thatgamecompany mainstays Kellee Santiago and Robin Hunicke both left the company this year after working as co-founder and producer, respectively. Chen states their departure will not affect the development of the new title, however.

"I wouldn't say they have any direct impact when it comes to developing the game. Kellee is mostly working on the business end and PR for TGC, so she represents the company, but she's not a developer in terms of engineer or artist or designer on this game.

"Robin was the producer, she's more like a manager type. But we still have the lead engineer, lead designer and artists from Journey, so it doesn't really matter in terms of our ability to make games. But it changes the way the studio is run and the way it's managed."

Chen added that while retrospectively PlayStation Move could have been a nice addition to their last release, Journey, the technology was available too late in development. He states the studio "probably would use Move" for a future project.

There is no word whether the next release will be Move-compatible.