When it comes to the release date for Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, Sony and Naughty Dog have only given us the vague “2015” when talking about the upcoming title.
To try to get a little more information about Uncharted 4, Stevivor caught up with Sony Computer Entertainment Australia and New Zealand Managing Director Michael Ephraim, where they asked him if he could nail down the release date any further:
(laughs) We don’t know, that’s the honest answer. We’re very excited about it and I think that title will be massive. It’s a very popular franchise; in fact it’s our number one first-party franchise.
He added, “Of course, Uncharted will be the highlight of the year for us though.”
The piece about Uncharted being the #1 first-party franchise is interesting, as the Gran Turismo series was over 70 million sold before Gran Turismo 6 launched, while all four Uncharted games were at 17 million as of April 2012. If you go by just the PS3 numbers, Gran Turismo 5 Prologue and Gran Turismo 5 have combined for over 15 million in sales, and once you add in Gran Turismo 6, it’s likely GT is selling higher than the PS3 Uncharted games.
So, since he didn’t clarify exactly how he quantified Uncharted being the #1 first-party franchise, we’ll have to assume he meant it solely for Australia and New Zealand.
Elsewhere in the interview, Ephraim revealed that “about 80%” of PlayStation 3 owners are connected to the PlayStation Network. On PlayStation 4, the number is currently around 95%.
As for what’s ahead in 2015 on PlayStation, Ephraim explained, “We want to build on that connected network and reward our PlayStation Plus subscribers. We want to build that PlayStation community and have people connecting, going online and playing online. We’ve launched so many things in the last six months that now, aside from new content, the focus for 2015 is to bed down and have people exploring all of the social functionality and connected features of PlayStation 4.
Additionally, Ephraim brought up DLNA when speaking about the PlayStation ecosystem:
We plan to build on the non-game entertainment content and there are upgrades to the system all the time to improve what it is capable of, like the new DLNA functionality.
With Naughty Dog attending the PlayStation Experience event, hopefully we’ll learn more about Uncharted 4 then.
[Source: Stevivor]
