Should Sly Cooper Return For The PS5? | Game Rant
When Sly Cooper was first available on the PS2, the trilogy that it spawned was so successful that it made Sucker Punch Productions a worthwhile game development studio. The newly purchased first-party PlayStation studio ended up paying off for Sony immensely.
Sucker Punch would then go on to support every future PlayStation platform with successful projects like Infamous and its sequel on PS3, Infamous Second Son on PS4, and the hotly anticipated Ghost of Tsushima also for PS4. The studio also developed various story expansions with its released titles. This is not only to say that Sucker Punch is too busy to go back to Sly Cooper but also to say that it was done with the series a long time ago. This is where Sanzaru Games, developers of Sly Cooper Thieves in Time for PS3, once again comes into the picture.
Though Sanzaru has recently been busy with its VR title Asgard's Wrath, the studio was and still is more than capable of handling another sequel to the Sly Cooper series. For context, Sanzaru originally developed The Sly Collection, an HD remaster of the original trilogy, for PS3 in 2010.
Much like how Bluepoint Games built its bones on hit HD remasters like the God of War Collection, Sanzaru used the opportunity to port the Sly Cooper series to PS3 and became quite attached the sneaky raccoon. After the release of The Sly Collection, the studio would pitch a fourth entry in the series to Sony where it was approved.
Though the game was considered a good critical and commercial success, Sly Cooper Thieves in Time turned out to be the last time fans would see the raccoon and his gang of anthropomorphic animals. There is still no word on a new entry in the franchise besides the Sly Cooper developer saying a story for the fifth game is already planned but not approved for development. One of the key issues with the unfortunate outcome of this series is that a cliffhanger, which was hidden behind the platinum trophy for Sly Cooper Thieves in Time, pointed to another sequel but that project has yet to see the light of day.
That being said, the PS5 is due to release soon during holiday 2020. Using the PS3 and PS4 as examples (and really, most consoles with few exceptions), the first couple of years after the launch of a new console is typically light on major games, likely because developers are still working on new titles.
This is the perfect opportunity to release a new Sly Cooper game. Not only is the new story already planned out and the cliffhanger from before pointing to it, a new Sly Cooper game could sustain itself as a successful title for for a few months, which are precious to an otherwise dry gaming library early on in a console’s life cycle. Though PlayStation consoles can be generally associated with the more hardcore aspect of console gaming, a significant casual and family market still drives an important portion of sales for Sony. The family-friendly Sly Cooper is all but ready to sneak into the heart of a nearby family.
Sanzaru does not have any publicly announced plan for 2020, potentially opening them up for an opportunity to fill the void in the early PS5 library. Besides filling in gaps, Sanzaru would also be striking on a popular and lucrative vein of the marketing industry - nostalgia. People who were much younger (or really any age) when they were playing PS2 and PS1 in the early to mid-2000s hold great nostalgia for more than just Grand Theft Auto and Crash Bandicoot. The number of mascot games were higher than today’s output, including the likes of Ratchet and Clank, Jak and Daxter, and everyone’s favorite mischievous talking raccoon, Sly Cooper.
There's no known Sly Cooper game in development.
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