With The Last of Us Remastered set for release next week, Naughty Dog is currently in the process of considering ideas for a possible sequel.
Community strategist Arne Meyer told Videogamer that not planning for The Last of Us 2 "would be a disservice to ourselves and our fans", however, he added "We're just starting to explore ideas of what more could there be in this universe and starting that decision process. That doesn't mean the end result is guaranteed.
"I think we always make a smart decision in that all of our games are self-contained stories so they don't have to continue if we don't want them to or if there's no reason for them to continue."
Meyer, who yesterday said that it would be "nice" to bring Uncharted Remastered to PS4, informed IGN that Jak 4, a re-release of the Uncharted games, or even a new Crash Bandicoot are all possible.
"It’s never off the table. It’s 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.
"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 stylised 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 stylised artificial universes however, and then it’ll work."
Worldwide Studios' president Shuhei Yoshida said Uncharted Remastered would be a "good candidate" for PS4 earlier this month.
Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Andrew House recently said regarding the possibility of a new Crash that he "definitely wouldn't close the door on that" but with the rights to the franchise belonging to Activision, it's unclear how the game could be made by Naughty Dog or another Sony studio unless PlayStation buys the IP.
Even so, with sales of seven million for The Last of Us even before the PS4 version, expectations for Uncharted 4: A Thief's End and whatever comes after will be high – no matter what franchise the studio pursues.