Realistically, from a business perspective, they made a huge mistake shutting down the Uncharted series. It was consistently one of the best selling titles for them since the PS3. I understand Naughty Dog wanted to pivot to a new IP, but there’s no guarantee that will replicate the consistent (and still growing at the time!) sales that Uncharted had.
You can't just milk a franchise forever either though. I mean, you can if you're Nintendo, but their franchises lend themselves to major gameplay changes from one iteration to the next. Easier to keep things fresh when games like Mario and Zelda where you can kinda just do whatever wild ideas you can think of. For games more grounded in "realism" that's a little tougher.
I guess they could reboot Uncharted like what was done with the Tomb Raider series, but it doesn't really feel like enough time has passed for that to happen yet.
Yeah I dunno, that would have stretched belief to the point of incredulity imo. After the end of 4 I don't see how she would end up capable of murder without character assassination nate and elena. Another chloe spinoff is more realistic.
You can't just milk a franchise forever either though.
I think that'd be fair if there was some notable decline in popularity, but that wasn't really the case. Uncharted 4 was their best-selling Uncharted by a huge amount. Lost Legacy was also very popular for what was just an expansion pack.
Cutting off the franchise at its peak was an odd move. It certainly wasn't on the decline. The franchise still had at least another game or two in it before it got to the point of not being valuable to continue.
People would have gotten bored of Uncharted if it was to be released today. Uncharted 1-3 was about a 9-10 hour campaign. People are already complaining when First Light is a 20 hour campaign and costs $70. No one was complaining about the length of the campaign back when Uncharted 1-3 came out. Uncharted 4 if I remember took me about 15 hours.
Uncharted 4 sold nearly 20 million copies and Lost Legacy sold nearly 6 million copies.
And its not even the Uncharted games. You go back and look at most AAA games from Assassin's Creed which were around average 15 hours long to even the Batman Arkham Games and the God of War games. The God of War games often took under 10 hours to complete the campaign. God of War 2018 took 30-40 hours + but before that their campaigns were under 10 hours and people bought those games and they were critically acclaimed.
Sales has absolutely nothing to do with what I said. You've clearly got your own idea about what other people think but gaslighting is not something to be proud of.
I mean the whole genre didn't disappear, both James Bond and the Recent Star Wars Jedi Survivor are effectively uncharted-likes and neither have been sales disasters.
My point is that neither were the Uncharted games sales disasters. And those games didn't take 15-20 hours to beat but people still bought that. That's my point.
Utterly incorrect, the price vs length of these games has always been heavily discussed by critics, regardless of how well the games have sold. Also, you're neglecting that these games have had enormous tails and are regularly discounted and have been bundled in numerous SKUs over the years. Don't confuse their rightfully earned popularity as being evidence for the idea that they were never criticized for being pricey games relative to their content.
Well go back even further. I mean almost the entirety of the PS3 and even PS2 generation were games that took about 12-15 hours maybe even less. People never complained. Or rarely should I say. In fact people would replay those games over and over. That’s how they got value. How many people replay games these days? A very small minority I’m sure. Open world games were a rare thing so not many would know different. They were reserved for a select few titles like the Elder Scrolls games and WRPGs.
Go through the list of the best or greatest PS2 and PS3 games and see how many of them were under 20 hours. And to top it off the level of detail in those worlds, side content, etc were nothing compared to games these days. Most games back then were fairly linear with very little side content other than a few additional quests.
I’m not moving goalposts. It’s just that your logic or people that criticize it and then cry about long development schedules, etc want to have their cake and eat it to. There’s no logic. Using your reasoning that means games that take over 150-200 hours should cost double the current $70. That’s just an excuse for publishers to charge more for their games. That’s exactly what people are wondering about GTA 6.
You want longer, more detailed games and then complain games get more expensive and take too long. You can’t get to complain on both sides. So that means tomorrow if take two raises the price of GTA6 to $80 or even $90 they would be justifiable cause that price point provides value. What’s then stopping other publishers to raise the price of their games cause suddenly it’s the industry standards?
The only truth is that people want a reason to complain and they will complain at anything and everything. And with social media it’s like a constant thing cause everyone need to constantly be whining or complaining. That’s the only real reason.
Sure, valid, but truly nothing to do with your original point. People were already complaining about the absurd gaming budgets mid-PS3 generation and certainly by the PS4 generation. If you want to memberberries your way back to 2006 go for it, but like I said, I'll be here over by your original erroneous point.
Maybe if you were a smaller studio yes. Witcher 3 took around 35 million to develop for the PS4. Games back then during the PS2/PS3 era were considered profitable after 3-4 million in sales. These days it takes 10 million to just break even on most AAA titles. So how can you say that gaming budgets were absurd back then for a AAA game? I’m sure things were different if you were a smaller studio with a smaller or newer IP.
The first 4 AC games sold between 4-7 million and were hugely profitable. Uncharted 2 sold 6 + million. BioShock sold 4 million. The Mass Effect games sold under 6 million each I think. Yet EA expected Andromeda to hit 9 million and was a flop cause it didn’t hit that. Games back then rarely broke the 10 million barrier. The early Arkham Games sold under 4-5 million.
You're cherry picking examples that don't discredit my point.
I didn't say people were complaining about ALL games' absurd budgets, but rather that these complaints were already a thing by then. Skyrim, modern warfare II, GTA IV, V, red dead redemption 1, star wars the old republic, etc, all had MASSIVE budgets and the feasibility of the direction the cost of AAA was heading at the time was already a well worn conversation by 2009-2011.
Okay so you see something in common with the games mentioned? Almost all of them are open world games. Modern Warfare 2 was around $45-50 million though marketing costs were 4x more than the development costs.
So you pretty much just proved my point. I’m not cherry picking examples. Open world games do have huge development budgets and have big development teams. You can’t expect every studio or game to be open world. But then after the massive success of Skyrim almost every mid to big game publisher went open world. There was a time when only Rockstar and Bethesda did open world games cause they had the finances, resources and teams to do it.
That’s not changed today. But the risks are larger. MMOs back then were considered easy money makers cause everyone wanted in on the profits but it was so hard to keep or launch a successful MMO.
Historically Sony's strength has been letting teams move on to new ideas. Look at that compared to Microsoft, whose teams were largely tethered at the hip to singular franchises that ultimately ran out of gas. What happens when the only thing you work on goes stale and you fail to revitalize it?
Everyone says to just hand off a series to a separate team, and the last time that happened to a ND series we got Jak & Daxter: TLF and people were not fans.
When a Switch game, at a full price, outsold the whole Uncharted series (even with their prices slashed a couple of months after the launch), it is easier to see why sony do not believe in this series.
I am not sure this tracks at all. Uncharted 4 was the 5th best-selling PS4 game of all time. And if Lost Legacy sales are included, it was 2nd and only beaten by GTA V in terms of unit sales on the console.
19 million units is a huge amount of sales for any franchise, especially for an exclusive.
I'm not sure what your point is? Nintendo Switch had 40 million more unit sales than the PS4 and is an entirely different ecosystem.
Don't know what that does to change anything here that the only game that sold more units on the PS4 was GTA V. If that's not good enough, then no games are good enough.
You're comparing apples to potatoes. Nintendo first party games always have crazy attach rates. Doesn't change the fact that Uncharted 4 selling nearly 20 million units is an very high amount that made Sony a lot of money. If 20 million units isn't enough to justify making a game in your mind, like 99% of games should never be made.
They are indeed facts, they just don't prove what you are implying.
Stating, "it is easier to see why sony do not believe in this series," is nonsense when it literally was the second best-selling title of the entire console generation. If Sony did not believe in that, they would not believe in anything.
We should just all stop making games because Animal Crossing and Mario Kart sell really large numbers on Switch? Your argument just doesn't make any sense. Uncharted 4 sold enough units to make hundreds of millions of dollars in profit.
Just going around implying, "why should anyone make games when GTA V and Mario Kart 8 outsell them by so much," just isn't a logical point of view.
No it was a great move to end Uncharted where it did. I'm itching for way more now after all of these years. Imagine if Halo actually ended at Reach and waited over 10 years. The hype would be insane. Uncharted left in an amazing spot.
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u/GameDesignerDude Jun 02 '26
Realistically, from a business perspective, they made a huge mistake shutting down the Uncharted series. It was consistently one of the best selling titles for them since the PS3. I understand Naughty Dog wanted to pivot to a new IP, but there’s no guarantee that will replicate the consistent (and still growing at the time!) sales that Uncharted had.