Sucker Punch is still working on Ghost Of Yōtei’s multiplayer, but a brand new game is going to be several years away.
Given how lengthy game development is nowadays, especially for the sort of triple-A blockbusters Sony pumps out, it’s strange to think that Ghost Of Yōtei will be both Sucker Punch’s first PlayStation 5 exclusive and its last.
The studio did re-release its 2020 PlayStation 4 game Ghost Of Tsushima for the PlayStation 5, but it’s otherwise focused entirely on the sequel for the past five years.
For now, Sucker Punch is working on Ghost Of Yōtei’s multiplayer add-on, which is scheduled for next year, but it sounds like it has nothing else in the pipeline, and it won’t start work on its next project until work on Ghost Of Yōtei has wrapped up.
This is according to studio head and co-founder Brian Fleming, who recently spoke with VGC about Sucker Punch’s future and why it chooses to stick with one game at a time, rather than develop multiple projects simultaneously.
‘The truth is that whatever we do next, whether it’s continuing Ghost or going back to Sly, the decision is really more limited by, again, our cherishing of focus and time to iterate, which means that we really can only do one thing at a time,’ said Fleming.
‘If we were good at juggling four projects, yeah, we’d have a remaster, and let’s go do one of those, and one of those, and do some fan request, that would be really popular… But we only get to do one thing.’
Expert, exclusive gaming analysis
Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning.
Fleming added how even if the studio had lots of good ideas, ‘you only get to do one [good idea] about every five years. So that choice is really important.’
His choice of words suggests Sucker Punch hasn’t committed itself to a third Ghost game yet, which wouldn’t be the worst news, but if it’s not a sequel it’s impossible to guess what they might do instead.
Sucker Punch has so far stuck with franchises for a few games and then moved on. Sly Cooper saw three games on the PlayStation 2 (the fourth game was handled by a different studio), while inFamous saw four games across the PlayStation 3 and 4.
However, even if a new Ghost game takes ‘only’ five years to make, it’ll be the 2030s by then and the PlayStation 6 would be the new focus for Sony, regardless of whether it comes out in 2027 or 2028.
Who knows how gaming tastes will have changed by then, so any Ghost sequel would arguably need to reinvent itself, and move beyond the Ubisoft open world formula it’s been using so far.
Maybe it could take another page out of Assassin’s Creed book and shift countries entirely, if only to offer a change of scenery. Alternatively, Sucker Punch could simply move onto something wholly original, since it will be working with new hardware.
Fleming’s comments could get some people hopeful that the studio will revisit the Sly or inFamous franchises; something Sucker Punch didn’t entirely rule out a few years ago.
However, as Fleming has also pointed out, the studio has changed drastically over the years: ‘We now have employees who are kids of former employees. We have employees who weren’t born when the studio was founded.’
As such, there may not be many employees who are as nostalgic for those old franchises. Plus, when Sucker Punch is only turning out one game every five or so years, they need to be guaranteed hits to keep the higher-ups at Sony happy.
The original Sly trilogy reportedly sold 2.2 million units altogether, while the best-selling inFamous game was apparently 2014’s inFamous: Second Son at six million units.
Sony hasn’t shared sales figures for Ghost Of Yōtei yet, but Ghost Of Tsushima has sold 13 million units as of September 2024, and no amount of nostalgia is going to help a new Sly or inFamous game reach those kinds of numbers.
Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter.
To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.
For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.