Psychonauts 2 was launched worldwide on Linux, macOS, Windows, as well as Playstations 4 and 5, and the Xbox One, X, and S, on August 25, 2021, and kept alive the spirit of the third-person platform game that Psychonauts is at its core: in this article, we will be taking a look at when the third mainline instalment to the franchise Psychonauts 3 could be coming to global markets. Right, let’s get straight into it.
The fact that the first-ever Psychonauts game was released all the way back in 2005 definitely does not bode well for the chances of a third instalment coming to the market in the near future. In fact, the funding for the development of Psychonauts 2 was partly sourced through the video game crowdfunding platform Fig, and the entire process of funding took a good three years or so. Keeping this in mind, it seems as though unless the publisher rights are bought by another company with better resources than Double Fine, something similar could happen with Psychonauts 3.
Although there was indeed a game in the Psychonauts universe during the sixteen years between the first and the second instalment, it was an extremely short virtual-reality game that did not have any platform elements to it whatsoever and seemed to only serve the purpose of bridging the plots of the first and second games. This was not the ideal way to do this, since even the most popular virtual reality games do not do nearly as well as the average game. Could this be yet another sign of Double Fine attempting to cut costs?
Markus Persson aka Notch, the father of Minecraft and Mojang had actually offered to fund Psychonauts 2 all the way back in 2012, but the deal fell through in 2013. It is interesting to note, however, that Persson remarked that a few other investors were interested in the prospect of funding the game as well, but it did not ever come to fruition. Could it be that these mystery investors instead step in and offer to fun the third title? It would certainly make the development and release of the game happen much faster than the 16 years it took last time.
Either way, nothing has been confirmed as of now, and we’ll just have to wait for an official announcement before we can find out more. Cheers!
