Naughty Dog Talks New Crash Bandicoot, Jax and Daxter, And Remastered Uncharted

By Joshua Murney Posted on July 23, 2014

A ray of hope has shined down for nostalgic Playstation fans everywhere. Naughty Dog, developer of huge hit franchises for Sony, recently opened up about what they want to do with some of their most beloved series.

When asked if gamers would see the return of the rambunctious bandicoot, Crash, Community Strategist for Naughty Dog Arne Meyer told IGN ” It’s never off the table.” He continued, “Not too much time passing, but it’s the same issues we explored with the Jak game. Is it something that makes sense to us now. I mean we still have people that worked on the Crash games in the studio. We never forget our past and it’d be great for nostalgic reasons. It’d be the same reason as why there isn’t a Jak 4: I don’t know if it’s playing to our strengths right now.”

Meyer is referencing the reboot of Jak and Daxter that got cancelled and turned into The Last of Us. It was revealed last year by Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann that the studio attempted to reboot the PS2 platformer back in 2009. The game never got off the ground as Naughty Dog’s vision for the title didn’t make the game feel like a Jak and Daxter game. The studio decided they wanted to focus on narrative-driven games like Uncharted instead.

“Right now, what’s exciting everyone at the studio is continuing to work on narrative-driven games with strong characters. I think, at least for the time being, we haven’t exhausted the possibilities there, but that could change with something as simple as hardware. That’s what drove it before. I think we’re on to something really good though creating character-driven stories so that’s where our focus is going to be.”

“It comes back to our decision making process, whether it feels right. With Jak at that time we were really focused on making games grounded in a stylized but realistic world, and if you tried to transfer Jak to that you lose a lot of what made him special. It doesn’t mean though that at no point in the future will we get good at making stylized artificial universes however, and then it’ll work.”

Meyer was also asked if the company would ever consider remastering the first three Unchartedgames as they are doing for The Last Of Us. He responded, “It’d be nice. It’s always nice to find ways to try and expand your audience. I don’t know how we’d ever pull that off but I don’t want to say we wouldn’t do it. I think if everything aligns, we should make an attempt to look into it and do it as well.”

The Crash Bandicoot IP is currently owned by Activision, after being bought from Sony shortly after the PS1 era. This could mean that Sony could possible buy back the franchise from Activision when Naughty Dog has enough time to create a new entry for the series. The last game to be released in the series was Crash: Mind Over Mutant in 2008. As for the last Crash game developed by Naughty Dog, you will have to go back further to 1999 when Crash Team Racing was released.

As for what Naughty Dog is currently up to, the remastered version of The Last of Us is set to appear on PS4 July 29th. The company is also hard at work on the possible finale in the Uncharted series, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, for PS4. There is also a currently unrevealed title in the works that is said to be a new IP for the studio.