Sony Reportedly Plans Ape Escape Revival After 16 Years

Sony is reportedly working on bringing Ape Escape back after a 16 year absence, potentially giving one of PlayStation's longest dormant franchises another chance on modern hardware.

According to an industry insider familiar with the project, the revival is more than a general discussion about returning to older PlayStation properties. The wording used suggests that an actual Ape Escape project may already be in development, although Sony has not announced anything officially.

There is still considerable uncertainty around who is making the game. Team Asobi, the studio behind Astro Bot, is reportedly not involved. Bandai Namco also does not appear to be working on it, although that part of the report was presented with less certainty.

That leaves the identity of the developer as one of the biggest unanswered questions surrounding the project.

Ape Escape Could Return Without Its Original Studio

The situation is unusual because the studio most closely associated with Ape Escape no longer exists in its original form.

Sony's Japan Studio developed the first Ape Escape, which launched for the original PlayStation in 1999. The game became technically important for the platform because it required the DualShock controller and made extensive use of both analog sticks.

Rather than treating the right analog stick as a simple camera control, Ape Escape used it to operate gadgets. One of the best known examples was the Time Net, which allowed you to catch the escaped monkeys that formed the core of the game.

Sony later released Ape Escape 2 and Ape Escape 3 for PlayStation 2, alongside a PSP remake of the original game and several spin offs. The Pipo Monkeys also appeared outside the main franchise, including a crossover with Metal Gear Solid 3.

The franchise has been inactive since PlayStation Move Ape Escape arrived for PlayStation 3 in 2010. Since then, Sony has gone through major internal changes.

Japan Studio was restructured in 2021, with much of its remaining development operation centered around Team Asobi. That made Asobi an obvious candidate for any Ape Escape revival, especially because characters from the series have appeared in Astro games.

The latest report indicates that Sony has chosen another developer instead.

That also makes the nature of the project difficult to predict. It is not clear whether Sony is planning a completely new game, a remake, a reboot or another interpretation of the series.

Ape Escape has a gameplay identity built around gadget based platforming and unusual control ideas, so a modern return could give Sony room to experiment with features available on current PlayStation controllers.

For now, the most important detail is that the franchise appears to be under active consideration in a more concrete form than before. Sony has not confirmed the project, its developer, platforms or release timing, so the information should still be treated as unconfirmed.

If development is underway, however, it would mark Ape Escape's first new project in more than a decade and bring back a series that played an important role during the early years of PlayStation's analog control design.