An official pitch presentation for Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time has leaked online.
No, there's not a new Sly Cooper game being teased, but instead, the behind-the-scenes concept presentation for Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time has surfaced online. The presentation has been made available online and seems to have been originally posted by Tabreez Siddique on YouTube and then found its way to Reddit. The presentation contains footage of content that appears to have been cut from the final release, but also includes a number of figures.
Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time was released for PS3 and PS Vita, but before it was approved, it had to go through the approval process, which is what this presentation is. The title throughout the presentation refers to the project as Sly Cooper: The ThiefNet! and it looked as if the developer, Sanzaru Games wanted to have more focus on social features, with 50% of the game being a singleplayer experience, 30% of social gameplay, and 20% was for decorating their hideout.
There are also some videos in the presentation that show features that didn't make it to the final product. A Hazard Room feature would have allowed players to create a room that others could attempt to break into and steal from them, or the other way round. This mode incorporated PlayStation Network social tools to let the player know if someone had attempted a break-in while they were away from the game.
A monster truck mini-game is shown off where the player would play as Murray and be able to control the truck through tilting the PS Vita and using the touchscreen on the back of the device to accelerate or decelerate. Motion controls were also shown to be used for hacking, safe-cracking, and binoculars.
QR Codes were to be used and codes were planned to be scattered on marketing, websites, and "other game award systems". Scanning these would have awarded the player with in-game elements or "instant downloads". The studio wanted to make these as rare seasonal items and also planned to have the game on McDonald's Happy Meals and soda cans.
There was also to be a co-op DLC that would have introduced additional missions for two players. There's also mention of a "Scooby-doo style" parody level at Count Dracula's Castle, and a swamp level where players were to have stolen from the creature there.
The Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time presentation also listed the game's total budget at $9 million with the expectation to break even with 413k units. We also got to see sales figures of the previous three games, with Sly Cooper from 2001 pushing 1,169,164 sales, the second game at 965,793, and the third in the series at 722,390. It's also noted that the worldwide net contribution was $28,904,767.
Interestingly, the presentation document files contain a text file with presentation notes. It highlights that at the time of the presentation, which was 2008-2009, Daxter from 2006 was the #1 selling first-party title on the PSP and the "third best-selling PSP title overall".
While there are a bunch more things in the document, it's basically things we knew, or other gimmicky things, such as giving Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time 3D TV support. We've not heard anything about a new iteration for the franchise, but the most recent sighting was a cameo in Ghost of Tsushima.
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