Naughty Dog President Evan Wells himself recently revealed that the first-party Sony studio isn’t working on a new Jak and Daxter game. However, if it’s any consolation, he did add that he wishes that the studio was working on a follow-up to the classic platformer franchise.
No New Jak and Daxter Game in the Works
Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen platformers from yesteryears appear in either remastered forms or new titles, if not both. Spyro saw new life in the form of the Spyro Reignited Trilogy remaster. The 2018 classic saw the first three games in the Spyro franchise remade for modern audiences. Meanwhile, franchises such as Ratchet & Clank and Crash Bandicoot both saw remakes and new titles. With that said, you can’t exactly blame fans of 2000s platformers for wishing that the Jak and Daxter series was next in line. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. In fact, Naughty Dog confirms that it is not working on a fourth title in the series. As transcribed by VGC, during his interview on the latest Game Maker’s Notebook episode by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences the top dog over at Naughty Dog (pun intended) acknowledged that they’ve seen how fans are taking to Twitter to express their desire to see a new Jak & Daxter game. However, despite how many fans are asking for it, they’re currently not working on a Jak & Daxter game as of the moment. As already mentioned earlier though, it’s not for the lack of love. Wells wishes that they were working on a fourth installment. He says that “there’s still a lot of love for Jak & Daxter in the studio”. This shouldn’t come off as a surprise. The Jak and Daxter games were one of the developer’s first big hits before moving on to work on the Uncharted and The Last of Us games. It’s quite devastating news for fans of the Jak & Daxter franchise. The last non-remaster title of the series was Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier, tt was released for the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable in 2009. The Jak and Daxter franchise was one of the biggest platformers in the 2000s. The first game, Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, was released in December 2001 for the PlayStation 2. The series would see two sequels in Jak II and Jack 3 in 2003 and 2004, respectively. While Naughty Dog has admitted in the past that they considered releasing a fourth mainline title, the studio ultimately decided against it. It believed that the game took a darker turn than fans would have wanted from the genre-defining franchise. Naughty Dog is currently reportedly working on a PS5 Remake of The Last of Us with an HBO live-action series adaptation of the said franchise also in the works.
