Sleeping Dogs developer United Front Games has revealed that the company would definitely be up for churning out a follow-up to the critically-acclaimed undercover cop adventure.
The game, which was formally part of the True Crime franchise before Activision dropped the project last year, was released in August 2012 and sees players infiltrating a notorious Triad gang as cop Wei Shen.
Speaking with Gamer Informer, executive producer Stephen van Der Mescht revealed that the studio is “really happy” the open-world title ended up as a new IP rather than the original True Crime: Hong Kong.
“We never viewed the game as a True Crime game (although it shared familiar features), but the tone we were trying to achieve was quite different,” he said. “All in all, we are really happy that we ended up back where we started with a new IP.”
Sleeping Dogs was met with considerable commercial success in the U.K. upon its release last month, where it topped the All Format Charts for a couple of weeks. Even after Guild Wars 2 knocked it off for a week, it managed to claw its way back up and reclaim the top spot.
Over in the U.S. the game was a Top Ten title for the month of August, though was bested by stiff competition in the form of Darksiders II. Nonetheless, the game achieved solid scores from critics on both sides of the pond.
"It took six months from the point of cancellation to resurrection," added van Der Mescht . "Square approached us very soon after the cancellation, but it was a tricky deal to negotiate with a developer and two publishers."
"Any relationship between a developer and publisher is a complex beast," he explained. "The tricky things are aligning quality expectations, understanding on both sides what the teams are capable of and where they need support.
"Square Enix London Studios were great though. We worked very hard in the beginning to set those standards and ensure that expectations were aligned."
Check out our review of Sleeping Dogs here.