If you’ve recently entered the Uncharted franchise after playing one of the first three games or watching the new movie starring Tom Holland then chances are you wanna play the latest entry in the series Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End.
But if the only system you own is a PlayStation 3 and you wonder if you can play the game on it, then we’re sorry to tell you this.
No, unfortunately, you cannot play Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End on the PlayStation 3. This is because the game is a PlayStation 4 exclusive and is not supported on older hardware, such as the PS3.
It can be played on newer systems that share similar hardware to the PS4, however, such as the PlayStation 5, but there is no support for older systems.
Uncharted 4 is probably the pinnacle of triple-A gaming. It has exceptionally well-animated and voice-acted cutscenes, engaging combat, and several gripping action sequences that keep you on the edge of your seat. If you’re wondering if the game will ever be available on PS3 then we’re here to answer that question for you.
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Why isn’t Uncharted 4 available on PS3?
So we researched heavily into the topic and found several key reasons why you won’t be able to enjoy Uncharted 4 on the PlayStation 3. There are factors such as the lack of customer support from Sony, the limitations of the PS3 hardware, and the lack of a dedicated PlayStation 3 market. So lets start with it shall we?
Discontinuation of support from Sony
Perhaps the major reason why the Uncharted 4 games will never be available on the PlayStation 3 is that Sony has discontinued its after-sales support for the PlayStation 3. After a console completes its cycle in the market and stops being profitable for Sony, the pulls the plug on its support services for its store.
What this means is that they no longer provide key after-sales support that they might have otherwise provided at the time of active service. This can include things such as product training, customer service, customer onboarding, warranty services, returns, and exchanges.
This makes it incredibly difficult to sell and buy games in the PlayStation 3 market, as the regulation on your purchases has been significantly reduced. This means many video game developing companies are incentivized to move on to newer platforms that are supported to continue to generate sales and revenue using their games
Because of a lack of support infrastructure customers might not receive a PS3 port well and Naughty Dog, creators of the Uncharted franchise, don’t want to take the chance of upsetting their fanbase.
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Hardware Limitations
The PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 have notoriously different hardware architectures, which impacts everything from the way they render graphics to which games they can and cannot run. Simply put the PlayStation 3 is an inferior system to the PlayStation 4.
The PS3 has an RSX “Reality Synthesizer” 500MHz GPU, which back when the PlayStation 3 was released was a decently powerful graphics card. However, over the years the advancement in technology simply outpaced the simple graphics capabilities of that system.
The PS4 on the other hand has a 1.84 TFLOPS, AMD Radeon based graphics engine, which is significantly stronger and able to render far more assets quickly and accurately. Thus there exists a massive difference in the quality and quantity of the graphical abilities of the two consoles.
Back when Uncharted 4: A thief’s End was first announced many fans were disappointed that the game would not be featured on the PS3. However, Uncharted 3 Director Justin Richmond stated in an interview that to continue to push the envelope of Uncharted game graphics they can only use Sony’s PlayStation 4 system.
Lack of PS3 Market
The argument for bringing Uncharted 4 onto the PS3 sounded much more convincing back in 2016 when the PS4 had newly launched and many people still owned a PS3. However, this discussion in 2022 has become mute. This is due to very few people still owning a PS3, many people have either sold off theirs or given them away.
Things become even more complicated when we consider Sony’s trying to push their latest console the PlayStation 5, and don’t care for the sales of the PS3 all that very much. To sell the PS5 they have given free upgrades to many triple-A games, but most notably they have given an upgrade specifically to Uncharted 4.
Will Uncharted 4 ever be on the PS3?
Sadly, the answer to that is a definite no. Since the console generation has moved on to the PS5 after the PS4, and we are yet to receive a viable PS3 port of the fourth Uncharted installment, we can safely say that there will be no plans for Naughty Dog to release a version playable for that console.
The hardware limitations and the overall graphical downgrade that would need to occur to make the switch is just too vast, and most players have already moved on to newer, more powerful consoles, or PC.
We can, however, expect PC ports perhaps shortly as Naughty Dog wishes to tap such a market in the future. And we might even receive future installments that are globally available on both PS4, PS5, PC, and Xbox. But that’s mostly speculation at this point.
We hope this answered your queries regarding whether Uncharted 4 is or ever will be playable on the PlayStation 3. We regret to say that we don’t think there is any chance for such a thing. But all hope is not lost. There might be several reasons this switch cannot occur, but we can be hopeful that future installments are more globally available.
Until next time! Ciao.