David Jaffe Forms Eat Sleep Play Studio

The God of War guy and the Twisted Metal team depart from Sony to form an independent studio.

David Jaffe, famed director of God of War and Calling All Cars, Scott Campbell and many of the Incognito and Singletrac team members have left Sony to start independent studio Eat Sleep Play. Based in Utah, the Twisted Metal team (Incognito has kept the Warhawk workers) will work with Jaffe, who is remaining in San Diego to coordinate with the teams from his home office. Although they are no longer first-party developers for Sony, the two companyies have formed a three game publishing agreement. An unnamed original title is in development and is expected to be released sometime during 2008.

Meanwhile, Eat Sleep Play is porting Twisted Metal: Head On from PSP to the PS2. Upgrades for the PlayStation 2 version include 60 frames per second gameplay, five to seven new levels from the never released Twisted Metal Black: Part II and a documentary on the history of the series.

From Jaffe’s blog:
Again, we are working with Sony and that just feels great. We met with some other interested parties but at the end of the day, Sony is our home, our family, and we’re really thrilled and honored they wanted to work with us and continue the relationship we’ve spent almost 15 years cultivating. So in many ways, it’s like very little has changed, other than the pay cut ☺.

But it’s what we wanted: to go independent and see where we could steer our very own ship. Granted, our new ship is no longer the grand, unstoppable beast that is Sony. Instead, it’s a smaller vessel, scrappy even, manned with a crew of experienced sailors who felt the need to venture out into the unknown seas and and see what we could see. And the cool thing is, a small as our ship is, it’s not the least bit scary. It’s exciting as hell. It feels right; like the time is right, the crew is ready, and the grand voyage is just beginning.