A Naughty Dog job listing has left people wondering if The Last of Us 2 will come to PC. The developer is looking for a Graphic Developer who will “Join our talented rendering team to develop and implement new and existing rendering techniques for our upcoming game, The Last of Us Part II.”
This seems like a normal job posting, but the requirements for the job are where things get interesting. The necessary requirements are:
- Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or equivalent work experience
- Strong math skills with an emphasis in 3D math
- Strong knowledge of C and C++ programming languages
- Thorough understanding of current GPU architectures (AMD GCN, NVIDIA CUDA)
- Experience with DirectX12, Vulkan or other modern graphics or compute APIs
- Experience with HLSL/GLSL or other equivalent shader languages
- Console or PC programming experience
- Passion for playing and developing exceptional games
The interesting thing is that Naughty Dog is looking for developers with knowledge about NVIDIA CUDA cores and DirectX 12 technology. The PlayStation architecture does not use this tech. Both the PS4 and the upcoming PS5 use AMD-based architecture rather than NVIDIA CUDA. Also, DirectX 12 API is used for PC games and not for consoles. This may very well be Naughty Dog broadening their horizon. That said, there have been rumors of other PlayStation titles making their way to PC lately, so we can only hope.
Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls and Detroit: Become Human, all developed by Quantic Dream were released on PC in 2019. All of them were initially PlayStation exclusives. Another AAA title, Death Stranding, was announced for a PC release in late 2020. Recently, a few rumors about Horizon: Zero Dawn coming to PC have made the headlines.
Naughty Dog is fully owned by Sony. They are mostly famous for the Uncharted series, the first Last of Us game, and the Crash Bandicoot series, all of which are (or were, in Crash Bandicoot's case) PlayStation exclusives. It is possible that Sony might be ditching its “PS exclusive” model and follow Microsoft's approach of releasing games on their consoles as well as PC.
