Ex-Naughty Dogs Form Steel Penny Games

Next-Gen's Tom Ivan reports Naughty Dog veterans Jason Hughes and Andrew Gilmour have formed Austin, Texas-based Steel Penny Games, and are hard at work on the development of a WiiWare title

The company was organized in 2007, and the team has spent the past year building a proprietary engine geared toward the Wii platform's capabilities, and creating a new intellectual property which it hopes will span a series of games.

Set to focus initially on digitally distributed titles, Steel Penny's first release will be a WiiWare game in mid-2008. The company says the title "blends a challenging puzzle game with dramatic fantasy environments and appealing characters".

Gilmour, who has been working in the games industry for 20 years, was previously a senior background artist at Naughty Dog.