Uncharted: Nathan Drake Collection is an action adventure video game developed by Bluepoint Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. It's a remaster of the...
Uncharted: Nathan Drake Collection
Read More
Bluepoint Games was an American video game developer based in Austin, Texas, founded in 2006 by Andy O'Neil and Marco Thrush, two engineers who came from Nintendo's Retro Studios after working on the Metroid Prime series. Bluepoint spent most of its 20 years remastering and remaking PlayStation games, including the God of War Collection, the Ico and Shadow of the Colossus Collection, Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection, the 2018 Shadow of the Colossus remake for PlayStation 4, and the 2020 Demon's Souls remake that launched alongside the PlayStation 5. Sony Interactive Entertainment acquired Bluepoint in September 2021. On February 19, 2026, Sony announced it would close the studio in March 2026 following a business review, with about 70 employees losing their jobs.
Andy O'Neil grew up in Birmingham, England, and moved to Austin in 1999, where he worked at Acclaim Studios Austin before joining Retro Studios. At Retro he was technical lead on Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, and he contributed early work on Metroid Prime 3: Corruption before leaving Retro in 2005. Marco Thrush was also a Retro engineer. The two opened Bluepoint Games in Austin in 2006 as a two-person studio. Thrush served as studio president for most of Bluepoint's history.
Bluepoint's first game was Blast Factor, a twin-stick shooter set inside microscopic cells, released as one of the first downloadable games on the PlayStation Network when the PlayStation 3 launched in November 2006. It used the PS3's Sixaxis motion controls to shake and tilt the play area, which was the kind of launch window feature Sony wanted to show off. Blast Factor was small, but it got Bluepoint in the door with Sony and proved the two founders could ship on new hardware fast.
The God of War Collection released in November 2009 for PlayStation 3, bringing God of War and God of War II from the PlayStation 2 to HD at 60 frames per second with Trophy support. It sold well enough that Sony kept handing Bluepoint more of its back catalog. The Ico and Shadow of the Colossus Collection followed in September 2011, putting both Team Ico games in HD on one disc, and that November Bluepoint handled the Metal Gear Solid 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3 conversions for Konami's Metal Gear Solid HD Collection on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, with Genki porting Peace Walker. Those three collections built Bluepoint's reputation as the studio that could port older PlayStation games without breaking what made them work.
Bluepoint also took on smaller support jobs between its big remasters. The studio worked on PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale and ported thatgamecompany's Flower to PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita in 2013. The oddest entry on its resume is the Xbox 360 version of Titanfall, released in 2014, which Bluepoint ported from Respawn Entertainment's Xbox One and PC game. Other than the Metal Gear Solid HD conversions, it was the studio's only Xbox work, and it showed the studio could handle a modern multiplayer shooter on hardware a full generation older than the original target.
Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection released in October 2015 for PlayStation 4, remastering Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception from Naughty Dog. Bluepoint reworked the aiming in the first game, which had aged the worst, and brought all three to 1080p and 60 frames per second ahead of Uncharted 4. Gravity Rush Remastered came out in Japan that December and in North America in February 2016, moving the PlayStation Vita game to PS4 ahead of Gravity Rush 2.
Shadow of the Colossus released for PlayStation 4 on February 6, 2018, and it was Bluepoint's first full remake rather than a remaster. The studio rebuilt every model, texture, and environment from scratch while keeping the 2005 PlayStation 2 game's original code running underneath, so the 16 colossi, Wander, and his horse Agro behave the way they always did even though everything looks new. The story stayed the same, with Wander bringing the body of a girl named Mono to the Forbidden Land and making a deal with the entity Dormin to bring her back by killing the colossi. Bluepoint added updated controls, a photo mode, and hidden collectible coins, and kept Kow Otani's original score. Since the game was Bluepoint's second time working with Fumito Ueda's game after the PS3 collection, the remake was a return to familiar ground at a much larger scale.
Bluepoint co-founder Andy O'Neil died on June 10, 2019, at his home in Austin, at age 47. Bluepoint announced his death a week later and credited his engineering with growing the company from a two-person studio. He never saw the release of the studio's next game, which was already deep into development.
Demon's Souls released on November 12, 2020, as a PlayStation 5 launch title, developed by Bluepoint with Sony's Japan Studio. The game remade FromSoftware's 2009 PlayStation 3 action RPG, which follows a player character sent into the fog-covered kingdom of Boletaria to stop King Allant and the Old One, using the Nexus and the Maiden in Black as a hub between worlds. Bluepoint again kept the original game's logic at the core while rebuilding the visuals and audio, and added a Fractured Mode that mirrors every level, an expanded character creator, a photo mode, and DualSense haptic feedback. Demon's Souls was a showpiece for the PS5's SSD, since loading times dropped to a few seconds after every death, which in a Souls game is a lot of deaths.
Sony Interactive Entertainment announced it had acquired Bluepoint on September 30, 2021, making it part of PlayStation Studios. Sony and Bluepoint both said the studio's next project would be an original game instead of another remake. Bluepoint's next credit was supporting work on Santa Monica Studio's God of War Ragnarök in 2022.
After Ragnarök, Bluepoint moved onto a live service game set in the God of War universe, part of Sony's push into multiplayer games during that period. Sony canceled the project in January 2025, the same month it canceled a live service game at Bend Studio. Images from the God of War multiplayer project later leaked online in October 2025. According to Bloomberg, Bluepoint pitched Sony on a remake of Bloodborne in early 2025, which would have been the studio's second FromSoftware remake after Demon's Souls. Sony was open to the idea, but FromSoftware did not want it to happen, so the project never moved forward.
Sony confirmed on February 19, 2026, that it would close Bluepoint Games in March 2026, telling Bloomberg the decision followed a recent business review. About 70 people lost their jobs, and Sony said it would look for places to move some of them within its other studios. Sony's statement praised Bluepoint's technical expertise but did not give a specific reason for the closure beyond the review. Bluepoint shipped no original game under Sony ownership, and its last full release remains Demon's Souls in 2020. The studio's remakes of Shadow of the Colossus and Demon's Souls are still available on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
Uncharted: Nathan Drake Collection is an action adventure video game developed by Bluepoint Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. It's a remaster of the...