Naughty Dog: "PS3 still has a lot of mileage"
But will studio's next game be made for it?
Uncharted 3 may be pushing PlayStation 3 harder than ever before, but the game's lead designer reckons it can still go further.
"PS3 still has a lot of mileage in it," insisted Naughty Dog's Richard Lemarchand, while admitting it was "very hard to say" whether the studio's next project would appear on the console or future Sony hardware.
Speaking to Eurogamer TV at GameCity6 last week, he said the team "felt we were really almost taking full advantage of the Cell processor" to produce the "big graphical leap forwards between Uncharted 2 and Uncharted 3".
Getting more out of the console from now on, he explained, was more about processes than power.
"It now becomes a question of: how do we optimise those processing jobs that we send to the Cell processor; what kinds of things to choose to send to the Cell as opposed to the graphics processor; what different tricky ways can we find to get even more out of the system?"
He added: "I think whatever we do next on the PS3 or on any future platform, we're going to be able to apply those lessons we've learned in the course of making this sequence of games, and put those lessons to good use. Every single person at Naughty Dog is brimming with ideas for future games."
Uncharted 3, out in the UK yesterday, is the latest instalment in a series that began life on PS3 in 2007.
Speculation is rife that Naughty Dog will jump straight into development of Uncharted 4 - with some even suggesting it will launch on Sony's next console.
Lemarchand this week told Eurogamer there exists a "top secret plan" about what Naughty Dog will do next.