Syphon Filter Coming To PS3??? News

Sony Bend Studio has posted a job listing on Gamasutra's Job Seeker index advertising for a Senior Game Tools Programmer, noting that "PS3 or Xbox 360 experience [is] required" for the position.

Okay, so that's not exactly headline grabbing material by itself, but bear with us on this one. Clearly the job position is advertising for work on a PS3 title, a platform that the first-party Sony developer is yet to produce a game for.

Secondly, and most importantly, Sony Bend has developed every Syphon Filter game in the series' history. Since the days when Gabe Logan was the PS1's poster boy, to the more subdued PSP incarnations of the last couple of years (which are still a couple of the best examples of shooters on the PSP), Sony Bend has developed a total of eight Syphon Filter titles.

In fact, other than the upcoming Resistance: Retribution title for PSP, Sony Bend has developed nothing other than Syphon Filter games since it was formed in 2000. Even in the pre-Sony days, when Sony Bend was Eidetic Inc., the developer only produced one title other than a Syphon Filter game (Bubsy 3D in 1996).

As if that wasn't enough, Syphon Filter on PS3 rumours have popped up in the past. Back in 2007, a PSM article suggested that a Syphon Filter game would be coming to the PS3 in 2009.

Normally we'd take that sort of suggestion with a large pinch of salt, but the article also noted a range of other rumours that turned out to be right on the money (hindsight is a valuable thing):

These rumours included a new Prince of Persia game (check), Far Cry 2 coming to PS3 (check), as well as Resistance 2 to be announced early in 2008 (check) and released in late 2008 (check).

A PS3 Syphon Filter game looked pretty likely anyway, what with the success of the PSP games to draw from, but with all of this evidence to hand it looks like a very good bet indeed.