Insomniac Boss Explains Why Sony Skipped Resistance 4

The Resistance games were never among Sony’s most popular franchises but they still have a special place in some players’ hearts, especially those who remained ride-or-die through the tough early days of the PlayStation 3. And while 2011’s Resistance 3 capped off the alternate sci-fi history about a WWII-style fight against alien invaders in the 1950s in a mostly satisfying fashion, die-hard fans have always pined for a sequel. Insomniac Games founder Ted Price recently said the studio wanted to make one too, but Sony wasn’t onboard.

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“We did pitch that one and it was a wonderful concept, and it just, in terms of timing and market opportunity, didn’t work out,” the outgoing studio head said when talking about the unmade Resistance 4 in a new interview with Kinda Funny Games. The comments were made in the context of a conversation about how many games get cancelled or never even greenlit that people don’t hear about.

“[The pitch] was the result of a lot of Insomniac team members being passionate about extending the story further, because I do believe that Resistance has set up a really cool alternate history base where anything can happen with the Chimera and where they go and what their origins are,” Price said.

While the Resistance games generally sold well, Price’s mention of “market opportunity” could be a reference to The Last of Us, which came out a few years after Resistance 3 in 2013. Sacred Symbols host Colin Moriarty previously reported that Sony was worried about overloading its portfolio with post-apocalyptic games, and declined to greenlight Resistance 4 because “it sounded too similar to The Last of Us and they didn’t want the two games overlapping with each other.”

But that doesn’t mean Resistance can’t come back again in the future. While Price, who directed the first two Resistance games, is leaving the studio, Sony now owns the IP and, assuming Insomniac remains busy with its endless slate of upcoming Marvel spin-offs, could potentially farm it out to another studio, either internally or outside of PlayStation. Price seems hopeful that, one way or another, the series might still come back someday.

“Resistance 3 was intended to end that chapter of the Resistance franchise with the way that we ended with [recurring protagonist Joseph] Capelli and closed a lot of loops on various story items, and 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,” Price said this week. “When you work on a franchise for a long time, it’s nice to have a chance to move on to something else and at the same time it’s also nice to be able to come back to it. Fortunately, because we’re part of Sony and Sony owns the intellectual property to Resistance, we will always have that opportunity to revisit Resistance and if it works out again, as a fan I’m going to be pretty excited.”

At this point, many fans would probably settle for a simple remaster of the existing trilogy for modern platforms. Since the games released on PS3, the only way to play them on PS5 remains through cloud streaming as part of the PlayStation Plus Premium subscription tier.

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