Of all of the last gen franchises that deserve a return this generation, TimeSplitters deserves to be pushed to the top of the waiting line. It’s hard to believe that it’s been over 6 years since the TimeSplitters last appeared on the console. Now that Crytek have taken over at Free Radical, it’s safe to assume that they are thinking about doing SOMETHING with the franchise, maybe even releasing TimeSplitters 4 at some stage like they were supposed to.

But TimeSplitters 4′s no show has more to do with the poor sales of the third TS game, Future Perfect, then it had anything else. It has emerged that Future Perfect’s poor sales essentially sidelined a fourth TimeSplitters game. from happening

“TimeSplitters: Future Perfect didn’t perform as well as expected in the shops,” according to Tristan Reidford, Lead Artist in an interview with PLAY magazine. “Although fun to make, without stellar sales figures a further TimeSplitters game was going to be a tough one to sell to publishers. It’s a hard game to summarise in an easy sentence like ‘car modding racing game’ or ‘third-person stealth game’.”

“I think we just felt that the franchise was well received but we had other things we wanted to try before going back to it,” added James Cunliffe, Lead Animator on Future Perfect. “We weren’t in any particular hurry to rush into TimeSplitters 4.”

TimeSplitters 4 was originally announced in 2007. Four years later, the game remains dormant.