Naughty Dog are not only extremely talented developers, but they also work very quickly and pride themselves on hitting deadlines. The studio has never had longer than 2 years between big releases in 20 years.
The big question is, how has the splitting of the teams effected overall productivity, headcount for each team and their pipeline?
For example lets say both teams follow a similar pattern to last gen with a 3 year development cycle to begin with, followed by 2 year cycles. Then it will look something like this:
Holiday 2014: Uncharted 4
Summer 2016: TLOU2/New IP
Holiday 2016: Uncharted 5
So something has to be staggered, or one team is smaller and takes longer.
Something like:
2015-Uncharted 4
2016-TLOU/New IP
2017-Uncharted 5
Seems to make more sense, and it also gives something like The Order a chance not to be overshadowed by what is now a very big and established franchise. If Uncharted is 2015 though, it will be on a different level even from what we've come to expect from ND as a 4 year cycle will exist between releases for 1 team. Which has never happened before.
The only other alternatives I can think of is both teams want longer development times and there will exist a 3 year gap between releases from both teams. So, 2014,2016,2017,2019,2020 etc. If they split the work between the teams though, my theory is completely out the window. It could easily then be 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020.
/rant /wild musings.
