What Happened to Resistance?

What Happened to Resistance?

While Insomniac sees continuous success with every new “Ratchet & Clank” game, one member of the family is bound to be ignored by the masses. “Resistance” is one of the biggest IPs of the PlayStation 3 that Sony could greatly benefit from in the current age of gaming. Well, that’s what some may tell you. In recent years, there has been an uptick in the number of PlayStation fans begging for Sony to greenlight a new game set in the “Resistance” series or, at the very least, give us a collection of ports or remasters. But was it ever as big as we perceive it to be? Welcome to MojoPlays!

My name is Ty, and today, we’ll be taking a look at the mysterious disappearance of the “Resistance” franchise. Before we begin, we publish new videos all week long. So be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to be notified about our latest videos. “Resistance” was a rather interesting departure from the visual aesthetic Insomniac was known for in the late 1990s and 2000s. With the exception of their debut title, the gritty and action-heavy “Disruptor”, Insomniac Games was known primarily for “Spyro the Dragon” and “Ratchet & Clank”. While the former IP would continue under Universal Interactive due to publisher ownership, Insomniac would continue working closely with Sony and belt out several “Ratchet & Clank” games for the PlayStation 2.

However, as the seventh generation of gaming was approaching the horizon, it was time for Sony and its partners to start recognizing where the industry was heading. The PlayStation 2 was already diving into online gaming with a small selection of titles, but now was the time to go full force with the PlayStation 3. Though the PS3 wouldn’t launch for another year and a half, Sony already began showing demos starting at E3 2005. One of these demos was simply known as “I-8”, and it was a first-person shooter that blended World War II with menacing alien invaders. Gone were the days of colorful dragons and gems. In comes the beginning of realistic, gritty action games, or as some may call “the piss filter era” of gaming. Though at the time, this was considered a technical achievement in games. Just this demo alone showcased how much more detailed textures could get, how much smoother polygons could be, and ultimately, how games could get more immersive with better fidelity and interactivity. Strangely enough, Sony would never mention the game’s release date, only the official name via a presentation at the 2006 Game Developers Conference. “Resistance: Fall of Man” released on November 11, 2006 as one of the PlayStation 3’s launch titles. It didn’t receive critical acclaim, but reviews were universally positive overall with some outlets calling it the best of the PS3’s launch titles. Not that there was that much competition in the launch lineup between “Ridge Racer 7”, “Call of Duty 3”, “Tony Hawk’s Project 8”, “Genji: Days of the Blade” (you know, the giant enemy crab game based in on famous battles that actually took place in Japan). Though it resembled military shooters we had seen before, the incorporation of aliens already made the game more interesting. What was even more compelling was how the game changed depending on your actions.

These weren’t simple “good or bad” choices, but rather what you focus on shooting at in the fight. Shoot a Chimera that’s attacking your troop, and your allies live to fight alongside you in the next mission. Focus solely on shooting Chimera, and you might end up becoming a one-man army. This alone could determine how much easier or harder the rest of the game could turn out for you, and folks loved it. In less than a year, “Resistance” sold more than two million copies, making it an incredibly strong start for not just the PlayStation 3, but Insomniac’s new IP. The game would eventually flatline at just shy of four million copies sold. There was no question that a sequel needed to start production immediately. As with most sequels, the idea behind “Resistance 2” was to increase the scale of the universe; make the Chimera bigger, make the world bigger, make the cinematics bigger, make the animations bigger, make the marketing and merchandise bigger. If “Resistance: Fall of Man” was to be the big kickoff for PS3, “Resistance 2” was going to be the homerun and really push the technology while delivering a compelling game.

To really drive the hype, enigmatic websites were published that detailed stories about super soldiers, advertised newsletters from an organization called the Alliance for American Autonomy, included postcards with mysterious phone numbers, and contained secret documents talking about the Chimera. With this much buzz, “Resistance 2” was bound to be the biggest title the PS3 had seen yet. “Resistance 2” launched on November 4, 2008, and the critical reception was roughly the same as the first game. Critics loved the campaign and the online multiplayer, but noted how much slower the movement was, an odd downgrade compared to previous games Insomniac had made before. Criticism towards “Resistance 2” grew from players as more people pointed out how unreasonably difficult the game was compared to its predecessor. Regardless of these crucial flaws, “Resistance 2” wound up receiving several awards from a handful of gaming outlets. Sales were roughly the same, too, if not a few hundred thousand higher. Still, plenty of reason to keep the train rolling with a third game.

Unlike the first two games, “Resistance 3” had actually leaked before Sony or Insomniac could say anything about the IP’s next game. Columbia Pictures, one of Sony’s movie silos, had begun production on “Battle: Los Angeles” in 2009, less than a year after “Resistance 2” had been released. Sony wouldn’t announce the game until August 2010. What followed after was a bit of a strange marketing campaign compared to the last two. Rather than talk about improvements, story, and all the juicy tidbits a marketing exec would gush over with buzz words, “Resistance 3’s” marketing focused almost entirely on the game’s weaponry with short clips called “the Lab Video Series”. Some typical behind the scenes clips were published, but they were far fewer this time around. “Resistance 3” launched on September 6, 2011 and critically performed, well, roughly the same as the other two. Some outlets found it to be the best in the franchise while others took umbrage with the environments and level design. Online multiplayer also saw a few more hiccups than “Resistance 2” did, but also played a little faster. But the most shocking part of its launch was just how abysmal “Resistance 3” did commercially. Sales during the first week amounted to no more than two hundred thousand copies sold, a horrid amount when the first two games surpassed half a million before the end of their first week. The game never recovered fully after that.

To further showcase how bad commercial performance was, we can refer to the massive data breach Insomniac Games suffered in December 2023. Among the ocean of information leaked across PlayStation Network and secret documents was sales data centered on Insomniac’s entire library of games that were released on PlayStation 3 as well as PlayStation 4. According to these documents, “Resistance 3” cost roughly thirty-seven million dollars to make, yet only achieved a little over seventy-three million dollars in net sales. In other words, the game only made twice its budget back before flatlining. In the eyes of normal customers such as you and I, this may be enough to call “Resistance 3” a success. Any amount of profits is better than no profit at all, right? Well, if you’re running a company like Insomniac Games, that simply isn’t the result you want. When working in movies, TV, and even video games in the AAA space, you want to make more than double your budget back so that you can cushion the company should future projects and business deals fall through.

Unless you’re a smaller team like Supergiant Games or Yacht Club Games, getting double your budget back isn’t going to fly if you need new staff, new equipment, a new building to relocate to, and more to continue normal operations. Plus, before this point, Insomniac Games was making nearly triple its budgets back or more with every single game. So, what about “Resistance 3” made it sell so abysmally compared to everything else Insomniac had done? Was it the weird approach in marketing? Did the reception stem from the changes made in “Resistance 2”, causing players to leave the franchise entirely? The answer might lie outside of Insomniac’s offices. See, even though the first two “Resistance” games sold really well, the PlayStation 3 was in constant turmoil since its launch in 2006. As multiplatform games began popping up, players began noticing differences between PS3 and its competitor, the Xbox 360. Much of the general public found the Xbox 360’s controller to be more durable and responsive compared to the PS3’s DualShock 3 controller. On top of that, the performance of most multiplatform games were often unbearable on PlayStation 3 with constant frame-dipping, screen-tearing, and sometimes, slightly longer load times. It didn’t help that Microsoft was getting really aggressive with marketing deals and pushing for ads that tied games closer to Xbox.

On the development side of things, many studios found it easier to develop games on the Xbox 360 and even the Nintendo Wii. As we’ve learned in recent years, the PS3 had entirely different structures in cell processors. All of this would cause Sony to get left behind until the early 2010s when Naughty Dog was cranking out “Uncharted” games and Insomniac kept trucking along with “Ratchet” and “Resistance”. But that’s just a general overview of the problem. Another major contributing factor to “Resistance 3’s” commercial failure can be attributed to two other things: the Xbox 360’s dominance and “Call of Duty”. By 2011, many folks had already chosen Xbox 360 as their platform while the kids were gravitating more towards the Wii. And when all three “Modern Warfare” games caused “Call of Duty” to explode and become a global phenomenon, it’s going to be a lot harder to get folks to drop their favorite first-person shooter and try a new first-person shooter, one that may not run as well or feel as great to play as something like “Call of Duty”.

None of this is to say “Resistance 3” is an objectively bad game. If anything, it was a victim of circumstance, and what really drove the final nail in the coffin was the game that came after. In between the releases on “Resistance 2” and “Resistance 3”, we got a PSP spin-off from Bend Studio called “Resistance: Retribution”. Though it didn’t play like the mainline games on console, “Retribution” was and still is regarded as one of the most fun games released on PSP, and Sony wanted to try and replicate that success. Eight months after the launch of “Resistance 3”, we saw “Resistance: Burning Skies”. Released on PlayStation Vita and developed by Nihilistic Software, “Burning Skies” was quickly dismissed as the worst entry in the franchise due to its lackluster multiplayer, bland visuals, and forgettable story.

If “Resistance 3’s” commercial performance wasn’t a sign of the times, “Burning Skies” ruined any chance of the IP continuing as normal. Despite all of this, Insomniac Games was still willing and ready to move forward with a “Resistance 4”. Alas, this was not meant to be as we would learn in the 2020s. In 2021, ex-IGN editor and founder of Last Stand Media Colin Moriarty revealed that Insomniac had pitched “Resistance 4” to Sony but was rejected due to the number of post-apocalyptic games that were already in the works. Two projects related to the rejection include Naughty Dog’s “The Last of Us” and Bend Studio’s “Days Gone”, which would release in 2013 and 2019 respectively. This was reconfirmed by Insomniac founder Ted Price himself after his departure from Insomniac in February 2025. This bit of news would be expanded upon after the departure of Sony executive Shuhei Yoshida, who served as president of Sony Interactive Entertainment between 2008 and 2019. In an interview conducted by Moriarty in February 2025, Moriarty asked Yoshida about Sony’s departure from the first-person shooter genre, noting the dormancy of Sony IP such as “SOCOM”, “Killzone”, and of course, “Resistance”.

Yoshida would explain that online gaming is a “winner takes all” space and that when “Call of Duty” and “Battlefield” were dominating the market, Sony executives decided to turn away from the space. As Yoshida recalls, Sony internally recognized that they were known for great single-player games, but not great online service games, which shareholders kept pressing them for. But as investments grew and the industry changed, Sony Interactive Entertainment would change and focus more on PC releases rather than online service games. Yoshida’s insight holds a ton of weight in regards to “Resistance’s” future or lack thereof. During “Resistance’s” time, players would show up for the explosive campaign but stayed for the fun multiplayer mode. You essentially got two games in one package, and Sony stuck with this format for not just “Resistance”, but “Killzone” and “Uncharted” as well. All three franchises saw their own critical and commercial success, yet none are remembered for their multiplayer. They’re remembered for their respective campaigns first and foremost. Fast-forward to today, and the only first-person shooter franchise that is still offering single-player and multiplayer components is “Call of Duty”.

Most developers that make first-person shooters are typically sticking with just multiplayer and often try to break into the online service market. As for single-player centric FPS games, the only AAA developers that have found success in that format are id Software with “DOOM” and Machine Games with “Wolfenstein”, both of which are owned by Bethesda, which itself is owned by Microsoft. You could make a case for the RPG FPS “Fallout”. But for the most part, a lot of amazing single-player FPS games either wind up commercial failures like “Immortals of Aveum” or are finding their own success on the indie market like “Ultrakill”. With that in mind, it’s important that Sony recognizes the current market, and to do so, it’s going to need to reflect and ask itself some tough questions.

We in the PlayStation community need to do the same. In 2025, we are facing glaring issues in market saturation as more and more companies are trying to break into the space. If “Resistance” were to get a brand new game, would we show up like we did for “Fall of Man” and “Resistance 2”? Or would the new game be largely ignored and buried by the competition just as “Resistance 3” was? If a new game were to release, would it be able to churn a profit from being only single-player? Or would people be expecting a multiplayer component like they did back then? Would we all be okay with a “Resistance” game being only multiplayer? Heck, with every month being loaded with big releases, is there even any room for “Resistance” between what’s already in the works at Insomniac and what the competition is working on right now? If we even start right now, would the IP even have any relevance a few years from the outcry that’s coming and going now? These are all questions that none of us really have an answer to in the end. While it’s easy to chalk up “Resistance’s” untimely end to a couple of turns gone horribly wrong, it’s also been so long since “Resistance 3” and “Burning Skies” that it’s hard to say if the IP has any future to begin with. 

It may as well be a brand new IP in the eyes of the current market, and that’s a risk almost every AAA developer and publisher doesn’t want to take in this day and age, Sony especially. There have been acknowledgements on social media and in sizzle reels that the franchise did exist at one point in PlayStation’s history. But outside of that, the games are just a blip of PS3 heritage that you can stream on PS5 and PS4 while “Retribution” can be purchased and downloaded like a normal game. Perhaps there is a chance for “Resistance” to come back, but in order to show Sony that people want this game, PlayStation fans are going to need to be more vocal and actively show up. It will probably take the same amount of effort the FGC showed for “Marvel vs. Capcom” in 2021, and that was a whole years-long endeavor that required several notable streamers to participate, hordes of dedicated fans showing up to televised events with signs, constant hashtags across social media, support through merchandise from external partners like Arcade 1Up, and developers voicing their unrelenting passion and desire for said IP to return.

It was not an easy feat, and after all of that, we finally got a collection of “Marvel vs. Capcom” games in 2024, seven long years after “Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite” nearly killed the franchise entirely. Can “Resistance” fans do the same? Because if we truly want “Resistance” to come back, we might have to do exactly what MvC fans did but twice or thrice as hard. And as most hardcore PlayStation fans should know by now, Sony doesn’t like going back to the well and they rarely ever do. Perhaps with Hideaki Nishino acting as the new CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, maybe there is a chance. Perhaps with the supposed internal talks of reviving “Sly Cooper” and “Ape Escape”, maybe there is hope. Perhaps with the new leadership at Insomniac Games, maybe we can get a break from Marvel and Ratchet. Only time will tell. Did you play any of the “Resistance” games for yourself? If so, what was your favorite memory with the franchise? Let us know down in the comments, and be sure to subscribe to MojoPlays for more great videos everyday!