SOCOM is somewhat kind of not dead. At least, that is what Sony Worldwide Studios’ President, Shuhei Yoshida, remarked in a recent statement to Official PlayStation Magazine. “It’s not done. We never retire any franchise,” Yoshida said, “it’s sometimes good to have a fresh look at the franchises we have,” reference the rebirth of some of their older franchises.

To many fans, the final nail in SOCOM’s coffin seemingly came when Sony decided to close Zipper Interactive in late March of this year. Zipper was responsible for the first four SOCOM games, developed between 2002 and 2006 for the PlayStation 2, as well as three iterations of the franchise on the PlayStation Portable. After Slant Six failed to win fans over with their PlayStation 3 iteration of the franchise known as SOCOM: Confrontation, Zipper was tapped to produce SOCOM 4. While boasting a magnificent score by Bear McCreary, the game was not well-received by many of the franchises core fans, who felt the game had departed from its original vision established in 2002.

This new statement regarding the SOCOM franchise instill confidence in the hopes that the possibility of a next-generation SOCOM 5 or a high-definition remastering of SOCOM 2 are not completely out of the question. Those Final Fantasy Versus XIII and Half-Life 3 support groups may have to make some room in the meantime though.