With games such as Ubisoft's Watch Dogs, Bungie's Destiny, CD Projekt RED's The Witcher 3 and, ostensibly, Electronic Arts's Battlefield 4 all confirmed as next-gen (or multi-gen) titles, their platforms each including the PlayStation 4, the scope of Sony's third-party development support for the future console is promising to be prodigious. The manufacturer has been vocal about its efforts to make the PS4's hardware more developer-friendly than the PlayStation 3, and there's little reason to suspect that the marquee studios who've supported the PlayStation 3 recently (albeit to varying degrees of enjoyment. Sorry Bethesda) will avert course now.

Unfortunately, condensing the committed companies to a list has proven to be an inexact science.

Following its reveal of the PlayStation 4 at a press conference last week, Sony released what was then believed to be its official list of confirmed third-party developers supporting the the console. Justifiably claimed by the company to include "every" significant third party, the sprawling list was grouped into regions: 45 companies from Japan, 4 from the rest of Asia, 47 from North America, and the 53 from Europe listed below:

4A Games

Kalyspo Media

505 Games

Laughing Jackal

Abstraction

Ludosity

Beatshapers

Mediatonic

Big Ant

Milestone

Big Bit

Mojang

BitComposer

Onmi Systems

Bloober Team S.A.

Prodigy Design

Boss Alien

Ripstone

Bugbear

Roll7

Cauldron

Ronimo

City Interactive

Rovio

Criterion Games

Shortround

Croteam

Sperasoft

Curve Studios

Sproing

Dakko Dakko Ltd

Stormbasic

Deck 13

Straight Right

Double Eleven

Targem

Eko Software

Tate

FatShark

Techland

Flying Wildhog

Tonika

Four Door Lemon

Torus Games

Frozenbyte

Vector Cell

FuturLab

Virtual Toys

Gaijin

Vlambeer

GHOST GAMES - AN EA STUDIO

Wizarbox

Green Hill Studios

Today, however, Sony released a revised edition of its European support list which doesn't just add or subtract a few wrongful omissions or citations -- it substitutes an entirely different field of names altogether. 28, compared to 53. Major developers like Mojang (Minecraft), Rovio (Angry Birds) and Criterion (Need for Speed) are now gone; in their stead, however, are Avalanche Studios (Just Cause 2), CD Projekt RED (The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077), 2k, Deep Silver and more.

  • Avalanche Studios
  • Blitz Games Studios
  • Bohemia Interactive
  • CD Projekt RED
  • Climax Studios
  • Hello Games
  • Just Add Water (Developments), Ltd.
  • Deep Silver
  • Lucid Games Ltd
  • MercurySteam
  • Ninja Theory Ltd
  • Nixxes Software BV
  • Paradox Interactive
  • Rebellion
  • Saber Interactive
  • Creative Assembly
  • IO Interactive
  • Starbreeze Studios
  • 2K Games
  • Team 17 Digital LTD
  • Yager
  • Zen Studios
  • keen games
  • Splash Damage
  • Stainless Games Ltd
  • Sumo Digital
  • Codemasters
  • TT Games

So why the developer dissonance? Sony's explanation pretty is straightforward: The company told Joystiq that everyone on the initial roster was listed mistakenly, and the updated draft is now correct.

But that's not to say it's final. Assuming Electronic Arts is interested in bringing Need for Speed to the next generation -- the series is fresh off one of its most acclaimed installments yet, Need for Speed: Most Wanted -- main developer Criterion will almost certainly be along for the ride. Furthermore, 505 Games, whose name was displayed in Sony's partner collage last week (see the image above) but was excised today, confirmed to Joystiq that they still have every intention of publishing games on the PlayStation 4. Considering the unlikelihood of mislabeling 53 studios as dedicated partners, it's possible that everyone announced last week is still in union with Sony in some way, only the company was planning to reveal them at a later date. Perhaps someone copied and pasted from the post-E3 2013 presser?

The PlayStation 4 has been confirmed for a Holiday 2013 release.

Follow Brian on Twitter @Brian_Sipple.

Source: Joystiq