South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker recently inked a massive $900 million deal to continue their award-winning animated sitcom franchise. The deal includes at least six more seasons of South Park on TV, plus 14 South Park movies, along with a brand new video game based on the series. Little is known about the new South Park video game beyond that it's in development, but its developers has now been confirmed.
According to Bloomberg, Matt Stone has said that the South Park video game is in development at an "in-house studio." Previous South Park video games have been developed by other studios, with Ubisoft having the most involvement in recent years. It's unclear exactly who is making the South Park video game at South Park Studios, and if the team consists of any proven industry talent, but more information will surely come to light as development progresses.
Ubisoft has been making South Park video games since 2014's critically-acclaimed South Park: The Stick of Truth (published by Ubisoft, developed by Obsidian Entertainment). The 2014 South Park RPG was praised by fans and critics alike for its faithfulness to the TV show, and for giving players the chance to fully explore an open world version of South Park.
South Park: The Stick of Truth was followed up by South Park: The Fractured But Whole, which featured similar RPG gameplay mixed with a brand new combat system and superhero theme. Ubisoft also released the South Park: Phone Destroyer mobile game, though neither game quite lived up to the high bar set by The Stick of Truth. It will be interesting to see if the new South Park game is yet another RPG or if it goes in a completely different direction.
Prior to Ubisoft's South Park video games, the South Park video games weren't really considered quality games. The original South Park video game was critically-panned, and there weren't many impressed by the Chef's Luv Shack party game, either. The South Park Rally kart racing game similarly earned mostly negative reviews from critics at the time of its release. It's worth pointing out that the poorly-received South Park games were made without any serious involvement from Stone or Parker, though they were involved with the Ubisoft games.
With the new South Park video game being developed in-house, one has to imagine that Stone and Parker will be even more deeply involved in its development. All fans can do is speculate for now, but hopefully they don't have to wait a terribly long time to find out what the game has in store.
South Park is in development.
Source: Bloomberg