Ted Price, who recently retired as the studio’s CEO, revealed to the Kinda Funny Gamescast (transcription via WCCF Tech) that Insomniac had pitched the idea of a Resistance 4. However, Sony refused to greenlight it, which he blamed on “timing and market opportunity.”

“Resistance 4. We did pitch that one, and it was a wonderful concept. It’s just that in terms of timing and market opportunity, it didn’t work out. But it was the result of a lot of Insomniac team members being passionate about extending the story further. 

“I believe Resistance has set up a cool alternate history base where anything can happen with the Chimera, where they go and what their origins are. We spent a lot of time working on the backstory and kind of brainstorming on where we could take this in the future, and I love this franchise.

“I was fortunate enough to be Creative Director of the first few Resistance games, and I will remember many, many moments, good and bad. When it comes to development, it taught us all a lot about how we could elevate ourselves under some pretty heavy and some pretty difficult situations.”

Could it happen in the future? Price hopes so since he would “love to see this story taken further.”

“It’s near and dear to my heart. There are so many cool things about it. […] Resistance 3 was intended to end that chapter of the franchise in the way that we ended with Capelli and closed a lot of loops on various smaller story items. We wanted to do that so we would have more options in the future, whether we were to go ahead with more Resistance games or take another turn.

“When you work on a franchise for a long time, it’s nice to have a chance to move on to something else. At the same time, it’s also nice to come back to it. Fortunately, because we’re part of Sony and Sony owns the intellectual property of Resistance, we will always have that opportunity to revisit Resistance. If it works out again, as a fan, I’m going to be pretty excited.”

The franchise first debuted in 2006 with Resistance: Fall of Man on PS3, taking place in an alternate history where mankind fought against invading aliens known as Chimera. It received strong critical acclaim and commercial success with Insomniac subsequently launching two more titles – Resistance 2 and 3. There were also spin-offs like Resistance: Retribution for the PSP and Resistance: Burning Skies on PlayStation Vita.

When I talked about the five gaming IPs I feel Sony should look into bringing back on the PS4, Resistance was one of the franchises I named. While the series was, for most of its life, a bit confused about exactly what it wanted to be, by the time Resistance 3 came out, it had settled into the comfortable niche of providing engaging and high quality first person shooter campaigns.

But by then it was too late, and we haven’t received any Resistance game since, unless we count the disastrous Vita spin-off Resistance: Burning Skies. Insomniac themselves have gone on to do bigger and better things, such as Sunset Overdrive on Xbox One, Ratchet and Clank on PS4, and the upcoming Spider-Man game for the PS4.

So, are they ever going to return to Resistance at this point? Speaking to Finder, James Stevenson of Insomniac said that while it’s unwise to ever say “never”, it feels like a long shot that the studio would return to that series.

“It feels like it’s a long shot to me,” he said. “But I have learned over the years to never say never. I think there are a lot of people out there that have fond memories of a Resistance game from the PS3 era, but yeah, never say never, it’s just that we have no plans to make another Resistance game in the future.”

Okay, so if Insomniac is not returning to the franchise for the foreseeable future, what are their thoughts on some other studio tackling it? Stevenson rightly pointed out that Insomniac doesn’t actually get a say in that, since it’s Sony who owns the IP.

“Obviously other developers made the portable versions for the PSP and Vita back in the day. It’s actually Sony that owns the IP and owns that universe. So I guess if they were really passionate about making Resistance 4 and we couldn’t or didn’t want to do it, Sony could totally engage another developer. But that would be up to Sony, not us.”

So, that’s that- basically, at this point, if you want to see a new Resistance game, the ball is totally in Sony’s court, not Insomniac’s. I guess we should hope Sony will want a quality shooter in its pantheon, then. Resistance would certainly fit the bill.

Tamagotchi Game from Bandai Namco

UP2Play had an interesting list on its website back in March. This list stated that many games like Bloodborne 2 and a new Tamagotchi game for Switch would likely appear at E3. There was a lack of sources or validation (and some games on that list have been confirmed as not appearing at the Expo this year). And even if the Tamagotchi game seems…weird, it’s not impossible. Apparently, the original Tamagotchi has made a comeback in Japan. With the Switch reaching incredible heights in popularity since launch, it wouldn’t be the weirdest idea to have Tamagotchi on there, especially if it wants to cater to the mainstream population. Then again, it still sounds ridiculous so we’re going to wait for E3 to be extra, extra sure.