Sony has been adding more PlayStation 2 games to its Classics catalogue on PlayStation Plus, starting withTomb Raider Legend,Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and the firstSly Coopergame. Hopefully, the other twoSlysequels will follow suit. But, in the meantime, it’s said thatSly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonushas been the most popular so far, and has even had the biggest debut ever on PS Plus Premium.
This is according toTrueTrophies, which sampled data from over 3.1 million active PSN accounts. While there are no exact figures,Sly Coopersaw 39.66% more active players the week of its PS Plus launch thanTomb Raider Legend(both games arrived on June 11). It also had 2.5% more players than what PS1 RPGThe Legend of Dragoon, the former best-performing PS Plus Premium game, had during its launch week in February 2023.
As a die-hard fan of theSlyseries myself, it makes me very happy to know fellow PlayStation owners have flocked to the first game, be they returning fans or curious newcomers. At the very least, this shows there is interest in the series, though I’m hesitant to say this is all the evidence Sony needs to justify launching a hypotheticalSly 5. For starters, while it may rank at the top of the Premium tier, further data from TrueTrophies covering all of PS Plus putsSly Cooperas only the eighth biggest PS Plus launch of 2024 so far, sitting below indie hitAnimal WellandBorderlandsspin-offTiny Tina’s Wonderlands.
Plus, I really can’t think of a Sony owned developer that could take over theSlyseries. Sucker Punch, which handled the original trilogy from 2002 to 2005, has made it clear it has moved on from the series, even stressing ina 2022 blog postthat noSlyprojects were in the works at any studio. It’s also easy to assume the studio is busy working on a possible sequel toGhost of Tsushima, especially considering how much of a sales success that game was, with its last recorded figures being9.75 million copies by July 2022, two years after launch.
Sony enlisted Sanzaru Games for the fourth entry, 2013’sSly Cooper: Thieves in Time, but that studio has since been acquired by Facebook and is now part of Oculus Studios. And while Sony has studios well-versed in making 3D platformers, likeRatchet & Clankdeveloper Insomniac Games and Naughty Dog (which made theJak & Daxtergames before moving ontoUnchartedandThe Last of Us), there are likely far too busy with other projects that would be more of a priority for the company.
ASly 5is sorely needed, if only to resolve the cliffhanger ending fromThieves in Time. With the odds of such a sequel happening so low, though, I think us fans will have to pin hopes onSly 2and3being added to the Classics catalogue, which will hopefully happen sooner rather than later.
