After three stunning adventures on the PS3, the Uncharted series is looking stronger than ever, with the last game – Drake’s Deception – receiving hugely impressive review scores (including top marks from yours truly). And yet I had a worrying thought on the way to work this morning… have we seen the final adventure on the current generation of Sony machines?
This isn’t based on all that much factual information, I should make that clear now. But putting together what we know, along with some strong rumours from the world of gaming, and it’s a fairly strong case. Naughty Dog recently announced their upcoming title The Last of Us, a survival epic that’s due to be released either at the end of 2012 or the beginning of 2013. The game won’t arrive late; Naughty Dog have made a point of always meeting Sony’s deadlines to the day, being one of the very few developers to be able to boast such a record. And yet, it’s a solid 18 months of development at the very least, following the Uncharted trend of a new game every 2 years. With that in mind, we could be looking at 2015 before the next Uncharted title.
Now factor in the rumours that the next generation consoles will be at this summer’s E3 expo, with the possibility of a late-2013 release from both Microsoft and Sony. That’s a year or so between the supposed release of the PS4 and an assumed release date of Uncharted 4, and with some new tech available it seems very unlikely that Naughty Dog would want to stick to the PS3 for the next saga in Drake’s adventures.
There’s little doubt that there will be an Uncharted 4 at some point, Naughty Dog’s top dogs have said that as long as the inspiration and fun is flowing (something they seem to have enormous quantities of) they’ll keep producing the games. While this in itself is great news, the fact that The Last of Us will be taking up their time in 2012 does mean that if (and that’s a very big unconfirmed “if”) we see a PS4 before 2014 we probably won’t be seeing Uncharted 4 on the PS3.
Remember, this is nothing definite. We have no insider knowledge from anyone, no extra special access to clever places that other people don’t, but it’s a very realistic thought.
What do you guys think? Will Naughty Dog surprise us and give the PS3 a chance to go out with a bang, or will we only see Drake again after upgrading to the PS4?
I’ve been thinking on this lately as well. Uncharted has become without a shadow of a doubt, my favorite game series, as it has countless of other gamers. No one stacks up to naughty and their ability to craft cinematic interactivity.
That being said, I feel the possibility of ps3’s swan song being Uncharted 4 would be a nice choice. Rather then letting the ps3 wander off on the heels of sony’s next console (2014 release date?) it be a great way to send the console off (ala skyward sword) it would also be an equally, if not better (arguably) strategy to LAUNCH the console with UC4 right out of the gate. Talk about having a killer app on day one.
While i felt UC3 was the superior game, I can also see naughty dog ‘needing” next-gen tech to really make a “jump” that the series will really benefit from. They would most likely be bashed for if it does come out on ps3 again.