The former studio head says Sucker Punch currently works on roughly five-year cycles, but he sees four years as the more realistic and desirable target for future AAA development.

In 2026, almost nobody is surprised anymore when a AAA game spends half a decade in development, but more people are starting to admit that this pace is becoming unsustainable for some studios and for players alike. Many players would prefer lighter production cycles. One of the teams that has reflected on this issue the most is Sucker Punch, a studio with a strong identity and a major catalog behind it, which released Ghost of Yotei a few months ago.

Sucker Punch’s Goal: Games Every Four Years

Ghost of Yotei launched in October 2025, and its multiplayer Legends mode is set to arrive on March 10, but the studio will not decide on its next project until all work on Yotei is finished. Brian Fleming, one of the studio’s founders, told Game Developer that making a game now takes them around five years, which is longer than they would like.

“These games are taking us, more or less, about five years right now,” he said after winning the 2026 DICE Award for Best Adventure Game.

“In all honesty, we really wish that number was four. If we could reduce it, that would be incredible,” Fleming added. He is leaving the studio in April. If Ghost of Tsushima arrived in 2020 and Ghost of Yotei in 2025, and the next project starts from scratch now, then Sucker Punch‘s next game could land in 2031 or 2032. With a four-year cycle, however, a new title from the team could potentially arrive in 2029 or 2030.

Fleming knows the topic from direct experience: he spent 28 years in the role, co-founded the studio before PlayStation acquired it in 2000, and oversaw the evolution of Sly Cooper, inFAMOUS, and the Ghost franchise. The team has previously expressed interest in handling multiple projects at the same time, but it has also acknowledged that it currently cannot do that and is only able to work on one game at a time. That means fans should not expect new entries, remasters, or remakes of those franchises anytime soon.

Source: 3DJuegos, Game Developer