A new State of Play presentation is happening tonight, in which Sony and its various third-party partners will be showcasing upcoming PS5 games. Yeah, we’ll hear about Wolverine and likely some other heavy hitters, but there are rumors circulating that we could possibly hear about the return of an old PlayStation 2 classic as well, and if not tonight, then maybe soon. Sly Cooper fans have been waiting for over a decade for a return of the kleptomaniac raccoon, and there’s enough tangential evidence indicating that a fifth game in the platformer heist series could be in the works that fans are wondering if the Cooper Gang might show up during tonight’s showcase. If so, I would be overjoyed. If not, I’m going to keep banging this drum because Sly Cooper is the kind of game Sony needs right now after years of live-service fumbles and burning bloated budgets on prestige Last of Us-likes.
Sly fans have had plenty of false alarms over the years, so what are we riling ourselves up for this time? Well, it’s actually a handful of bread crumbs that are leading us down a path to possible disappointment. For starters, there are hints that Sony seems to be considering doing something with the long-dormant series. Garrett Fredley, a senior build engineer leading PlayStation’s Asset and IP Preservation team, posted on social media last month about a presentation his team gave to Sony leadership on IP preservation, and guess who was on the first slide alongside Parappa the Rapper and an Ape Escape monkey? Sly Cooper himself.
Whether any initiatives along these lines would be in the form of a new game or simply making old games readily accessible to folks in ways that go beyond current streaming and online availability remains to be seen, but it’s clear that while original developer Sucker Punch may not be interested in going back to the series, someone at Sony still remembers the PS2 mascot who was stranded in Ancient Egypt due to time travel shenanigans at the end of 2013’s Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time.
But Sly showing up on a slide in a presentation doesn’t really mean anything, right? Well, the rabbit hole goes a bit deeper. What’s actually got Sly Cooper fans locked in for tonight’s State of Play is something less obvious, something…sneaky. Sneaky Devil Studios, to be exact. This is a new studio founded by folks who used to work at Sanzaru Games, the developer behind Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, which was part of Meta’s VR push up until it was shuttered in January. The team’s website highlights its previous work on Sly Cooper, as well as Asgard’s Wrath and other VR projects. Again, that doesn’t mean anything on its own, but there are two more ties to Sly Cooper that have fans suspicious.
For starters, the team’s name could be a reference to the series. In Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves’ post-credits scene, Sly’s tech wiz friend Bentley finds out that Sly has been living the quiet life as an amnesiac alongside his former rival Carmelita Fox, and when Bentley realizes the whole “rehabilitated amnesiac” thing is an act, he calls Sly a “sneaky devil.”
Pair this with a LinkedIn exchange between Sneaky Devil co-founder Mat Kraemer and Sly Cooper voice actor Kevin Miller, in which Miller congratulates the team on its new endeavor, and Kraemer responds by telling the actor they “should work together again [wink emoji],” and you’ve got enough to make a group of starving Sly Cooper fans salivate. Team Asobi, the studio behind Astro Bot, also threw fuel on the fire with a post on X advising people to “check the nearest safe” if you “can’t find Sly” hours before the State of Play. The accompanying image shows the tribute to the character in the crossover platformer, but the timing, on top of everything else, feels like a trail to follow.
If you can’t find Sly, check the nearest safe.🦝😉#AstroBot #SlyCooper pic.twitter.com/CstQ6RbAwl
— Team ASOBI (@TeamAsobi) June 2, 2026
All of this could be nothing, but after 13 years of waiting, we Sly Cooper fans will latch onto anything. We’re not as big a group as the folks looking for a Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer in every teaser or social media post, but “there are dozens of us.” Even if I didn’t desperately need a new Sly Cooper, I still think a new one might be exactly what Sony needs right now. The PlayStation 5 generation has been defined by mostly huge bummers, failed live-service plays, and remasters that feel like the company breaking glass in case of an emergency after games like Concord didn’t take off. AAA budgets are ballooning and, by and large, Sony is lacking in major hits, and its consoles are only getting more expensive for people to buy.
PlayStation’s game output was, at one time, pretty eclectic. While there were big prestige games in the PS2 era like the “Halo killer” Killzone and the cinematic, atmospheric Shadow of the Colossus, you also got a lot of smaller, weirder games in between the big blockbusters. Games in which you essentially play a Saturday morning cartoon like in Sly Cooper or do rap battles as a beanie-wearing dog like in Parappa the Rapper pretty much don’t get greenlit by companies as big Sony anymore, though you’ll find plenty of games inspired by these kinds of classic PlayStation releases in the indie space. Even so, there’s plenty of precedent for mid-tier games to not only do well, but also thrive, even as out-of-touch suits tell you that players only want forever games they can play and spend money on for years to come.
No, Sly Cooper 5 or a new Ape Escape may not bring in a billion dollars, but with the right expectations, they could be a meaningful piece of PlayStation’s puzzle in-between the marquee, prestige narrative games and the live-service swings the company can’t seem to hit. If PlayStation’s internal studios can’t make them, letting teams like Sneaky Devil Studios take them on sounds like an ideal approach, one that may not make every line graph on the company’s financial reports go up by itself, but could do a lot to fill out a catalog that has become incredibly monotonous over the past two generations. Sony was, at one point, perhaps the most experimental of the Big Three console makers. It had teams and collaborators making games that looked nothing like each other, were varied in terms of scale, and didn’t feel like they were repeatedly trying to tick the same boxes. The secret to finding that spark again is right under the company’s nose; it just has to temper its expectations and take a chance on some old friends.
