Naughty Dog Executive Reveals Uncharted Almost Had a Different Name

Naughty Dog's bestselling franchise, Uncharted, was nearly named something else, Evan Wells, Co-president of the developer company, has told IGN.

The Uncharted franchise, which currently comprises of three games, is a PS3 exclusive that brought Naughty Dog great success. The next iteration from the series will be making a debut for PlayStation 4 with the name Uncharted.

Wells said that the name of the game was anything but concrete.

"The funny story behind (this) is, we put together this trailer for E3 to announce our game," Wells said, referring to Sony's 2006 show.

"But we didn't have a name yet. We had no idea what we were going to call it. We brainstormed a bunch of ideas. Uncharted, actually, was on the table for a while. We went away from it."

He added: "Finally, for E3, we needed a name. We put the name in the trailer. It was going to be Uncharted. We made our peace with it and said, 'okay, this is going to be awesome.'"

However, prior to the screening, several complications and issues arose, forcing the team to screen a nameless trailer.

"We were all ready to go out with [Uncharted]," Wells said.

"And then (former PlayStation Executive Vice-President and current Microsoft Corporate Vice-President) Phil Harrison caught wind of it, and he's like, 'no, we can't name it Uncharted.' In the UK, if you have a game that's 'Uncharted,' that means it didn't do well, it didn't crack the Top 10. So he said, 'no, we can't do that.'"

The trailer ended with a plain and simple Naughty Dog title. Since gamers didn't have a name for it, the game went on to be referred to with a "Dude Raider" moniker.

In the end, the game released as Uncharted, and went on to become a grand success.