The rumors were half-right. Sony and Insomniac Games’ mysterious "When Worlds Collide" tease wasn’t for a Ratchet / Jak & Daxter crossover–it’s for Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus, a core series installment coming to PlayStation 3 this fall.
The news broke on the official PlayStation Blog, where Insomniac community lead James Stevenson explained that Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus will be the studio’s biggest downloadable game yet, "dwarfing the size of both Quest For Booty and Full Frontal Assault." Furthermore, "Gravity is one of the themes of Into the Nexus: you’ll experience zero-g space, you’ll use gravity-defying new gadgets, and you’ll manipulate gravity to solve brand new Clank puzzles."
Into the Nexus will launch this fall, at retail and on the PlayStation Store, for $29.99.
IGN dug deeper with an extensive preview, replete with images of the new game and a video preview. Into the Nexus will reportedly return to the series’ 3D action-platforming roots, after critically mixed side ventures with All 4 One and Full Frontal Assault. An epilogue to the Future saga that included Tools of Destruction, Quest for Booty, and Crack in Time, Into the Nexus will place Ratchet and Clank in unfamiliar territory–after two new villains escape from custody en route to the Vartax Detention Center, our space-faring duo are left stranded in a new, haunted galaxy and must confront the "darkness of space."
All the classic series elements are here, making Into the Nexus the first true Ratchet sequel since 2009’s Crack in Time. There are Gold Bolts and Skill Points. Weapons upgrade with experience. Clank has his own sections (this time, 2D platforming/puzzle segments reminiscent of Pid). New weapons and gadgets–like the Nightmare Box, Winterizer, and Grav Tether–mix things up, but otherwise, this is the same Ratchet gameplay that PlayStation veterans fell in love with years ago, balanced, perfected, and iterated on to yield a game that’s familiar, but takes the series "in a spookier direction."
What about PS Vita? “Everyone would love for it to come to Vita," James Stevenson told IGN, “but it has to be up to the series’ standards."