Click on the video above, which premiered on Attack of the Show and G4tv.com yesterday, to see Naughty Dog founders Jason Rubin and Andrew Gavin, myself, and other longtime Dogs share our experiences in creating this classic series.

Today the Jak and Daxter Collection launches exclusively on PS3. Now, over a decade since the Jak and Daxter series originally premiered on PS2, I’m so proud to see the legacy of Naughty Dog’s work brought together for the first time ever on one Blu-ray Disc.

The Jak and Daxter Collection brings some of your favorite J&D adventures — Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, Jak II and Jak 3 — to life like never before. Mass Media has re-mastered each installment of the collection to feature 720p high definition visuals and stereoscopic 3D support. The Jak and Daxter Collection also features over 100 trophies (including 3 platinum) for you to hunt down while you play through all three titles.

In addition to picking up the Jak and Daxter Collection at your local game retailer, you’ll be able to download the title via PSN. Starting today, the Jak and Daxter Collection will be available on the PlayStation Store for $39.99. You can also choose to download any of the installments from the collection separately for $14.99.

Be sure to grab the Jak and Daxter Collection today for a chance to experience the full evolution of the franchise. You’re in for some funny and wild adventures — enjoy!

Each game has been fully remastered to feature 720p HD visuals and stereoscopic 3D functionality, and one of the coolest new additions to the titles in Jak and Daxter Collection is the introduction of Trophy support.

When the series debuted on PS2 over 10 years ago, we didn’t have Trophies. For our jump to PS3, Mass Media crafted custom Trophies for you to earn for all three titles in the collection. The team at Mass Media has created intricate Trophies, each featuring a unique variation on a design theme based around its mission type. There are over 100 to collect including three Platinum Trophies, so you completionists will have hours of Trophy-hunting fun to look forward to.

Here’s a sneak peek at some of the Trophies that will be up for grabs:

Pedal to the Metal	Destroy Metal Kor at Nest	Gold
Purple Pain	Navigate the Purple Precursor Rings	Bronze
The Super Orberator	Collect 2000 Precursor Orbs	Gold
Testosterone	Pass the Tests of Manhood	Silver
Just the Artifacts Ma’am	Find 3 Artifacts in Mountain Temple	Bronze
What’s That Smell?	Escort Men Through Sewers	Bronze
The Beast Beater	Destroy Metal Head Beasts	Bronze
Gate Crasher Masher	Defend Spargus’ Front Gate	Bronze

Be sure to track them all down when Jak and Daxter Collection launches on PS3 this February 7th. Happy hunting!

Videos have been flying around all week about a new PS3 exclusive called The Last of Us. It was revealed at this year’s VGAs and we’re very excited to confirm that The Last of Us is developed by Naughty Dog Inc, the creators behind the UNCHARTED, Jak and Daxter, and Crash Bandicoot series. Neil Druckmann, Creative director and Bruce Straley, Game Director chime in below to divulge what The Last of Us is all about.

The Last of Us is a genre-defining experience that blends survival and action elements to tell a character driven tale about a modern plague decimating mankind. Nature encroaches upon civilization, forcing remaining survivors to kill for food, weapons and whatever they can find. Joel, a ruthless survivor, and Ellie, a brave young teenage girl who is wise beyond her years, must work together to survive their journey across what remains of the United States.

We hope this teaser trailer has whet your appetite. We’re excited we can finally begin to peel back the curtain on The Last of Us and discuss how we’ve been working as a two team studio. For further information about The Last of Us, the PlayStation.Blog will be the first place to hear about this exciting new title from some of the industry’s most talented game designers.

It’s hard to believe it’s been ten years since Jak and Daxter found their way onto PlayStation 2 and into the gaming world. We are delighted at the place the franchise has found amongst the gaming community and the mark it has left on the platformer genre in particular. Given that we’re so close to the 10th anniversary, looking back at some of the work that went into making those awesome games seems to be in order. It’s amazing to recall just how the development of the Jak and Daxter franchise has progressed and just how far we’ve come.

With each outing in the Jak and Daxter series, we set out to create a game that offered the player a new experience that built on the previous game. As you go from Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy to Jak 3, the story will connect across the titles as the gameplay and technical aspects of the games and the tools used to create them evolved. From being on foot in Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy to the hoverboard and morph gun in Jak II to the dune buggies in Jak 3, new gameplay ideas were always in play and being fleshed out and amped up. On the technical side, for instance, Jak 3 featured a new terrain renderer that included bump-mapping, which is now a commonplace element in rendering terrain. Cloth dynamics and rag-doll physics, also standard features in many modern games, were new developments by the time that Jak 3 was released in 2004.

All in all, the evolution of the franchise was a long, fun and winding road, and we are delighted to be able to share it with the current console generation. With the Jak and Daxter Collection, we’re bringing the first three installments of the original PS2 series to PS3 on one Blu-ray disc. Mass Media has been working closely with our team at Naughty Dog to remaster Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, Jak II and Jak 3 for the collection. Each title will now offer refined 720p High Definition visuals, smoother gameplay animation, full stereoscopic 3D functionality and trophy support.

Looking back at the old code and comparing it to this newly minted code is pretty amazing. Our beloved Jak and Daxter franchise and its colorful cast of characters looks, and still plays, truly awesome. The technology and the development work that went into making The Jak and Daxter Collection is remarkable. We’re looking forward to hearing your thoughts and stories once you get your hands on the collection.

For those of you who are longtime fans, get ready to experience the Jak and Daxter you love in a fresh new light. If you’re new to the franchise, be ready to get hungry for more eco.

Greetings all, hopefully you’ve been getting to spend some quality time with UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception these past few weeks. We are grateful for all the positive fan feedback and thank you for the support! I’m not here today to talk about U3, though. We’ve been getting many, many requests asking about Jak and Daxter coming to PS3, and I’m happy to announce that the series will make its PS3 debut this February with the launch of the Jak and Daxter Collection.

The Jak and Daxter Collection features three of our favorite Jak and Daxter titles – Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, Jak II, and Jak 3 – all remastered by Mass Media, working closely with our team at Naughty Dog. With the launch of Jak and Daxter Collection, you’ll be able to experience the adventures of Jak and his Daxter in 720p high definition with crisper visuals, smoother gameplay animation, and in full stereoscopic 3D. And, I’m sure all of you hardcore collectors will be happy to hear that each game in the trilogy features full PS3 trophy support.

The Jak and Daxter franchise set a benchmark for the platformer genre with its huge environments and gaming freedom. In fact, it holds seven world records in the Guinness World Records: Gamer’s Edition 2008 including the First Seamless 3D World in a Console Game. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of love for the franchise here at Naughty Dog, and it has a very special place in our hearts. If you can believe it, the Jak and Daxter franchise will be celebrating its 10th anniversary this year on December 4th and we’ll be checking in with you via the PlayStation.Blog to help us celebrate. In the meantime, let me know your favorite Jak and Daxter memories in the comments and be sure to stay tuned to the blog to for the latest Jak and Daxter Collection news.

I arrived at the show with Christophe, Amy and Bruce and we walked the red carpet, which was a pretty cool way to start the evening off. There were tons of media lined up with cameras and microphones ready for interviews. We stopped for a few interviews and Christophe even played a game of Wii Resort Table Tennis against one of our interviewers (he let her win…so he says). Continuing down the carpet, we ran into a bunch of people arriving at the same time as us like Marty O’Donnell from Bungie (who walked away with the award for Best Score for Halo: ODST… congrats!), our friends from Infinity Ward (Modern Warfare 2 won Best Shooter and Best Multi-player!) and Stig Asmussen (God of War III won Most Anticipated Game!). It’s humbling to be around the people who make your favorite games.

Once we found our seats (VIP…thanks, Geoff Keighley) we sat around and waited nervously for the show to start. I had to control my inner fanboy as Mark Hamill, Samuel Jackson and Alyssa Milano sat down in front of us. The setup was amazing! The back of the stage was a huge video screen that actually wrapped around the sides to create a really cool 3D effect. SPIKE really stepped it up this year and pulled out all the stops.

As the show began, it was awesome to hear Claudia Black’s voice as the MC for the evening. She had only found out the night before that they wanted her for the job and she jumped right in and nailed it. A consummate professional, as always. Unfortunately we soon found out that both she and Nolan North lost out to Jack Black for Best Voice which was the start of our losing streak, and had us worried we might walk away empty-handed. The competition was tough this year…in each of the 8 categories we were nominated in, we were going up against my favorite games of the year.

After losing Best Studio, Best Action Adventure Game, and Best Score we were up to 0 for 5! We were definitely getting even more anxious. The show was coming to a close, and after the amazing Halo Reach world premiere they announced that it was time for the Game of the Year presentation. I cheated and looked at the teleprompter so I could see a split second before it was announced and there it was…UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves! It was an amazing feeling walking up on stage to accept the award. They announced we had also won Best PS3 Game and Best Graphics at the same time. The night belonged to the team back at Naughty Dog but I couldn’t imagine two people better to represent them than our Game and Creative Directors, Bruce and Amy. So they gave their heartfelt acceptance speeches and the show was over.

From there it was off to the parties and time to celebrate with the rest of the Dogs. A bunch of coworkers who were at the community event/viewing party in Hollywood drove downtown to meet us. It was a great night and I couldn’t have been more proud to have been part of such an amazing project. We’re so glad that a bunch of us got to share the moment with the fans at the community event because in the end, that’s really why we work so hard on our games. Knowing that we have an audience that appreciates the end result keeps us coming back to do better next time.

This was only the second time in Naughty Dog’s 15-year history of making PlayStation games that we had won an industry award of this caliber, and we tripled that in one night. We’ve definitely raised the bar for ourselves in so many ways. But everyone on the team is looking forward to the challenge and we couldn’t be more excited to do it again.

Now it’s time to enjoy the holidays, but then it’s time to put our noses back to the grind stone and see what happens next.

• Total Number of games played – 1,217,424
• Total Number of Kills – 92,110,787
• Total Number of Treasures Captured – 1,860,645
• Total Amount of Money Earned – $38,841,367,350
• Total Time Played – 9,905 days (or 27+ years!)

The demo is currently #1 out of the top 5 demo first-week downloads to date, and is on a trajectory to become the most downloaded demo on PSN, ever. You can add to that number right now by visiting the PlayStation Store.

If you’ve been keeping score at home, UNCHARTED 2 has racked up 17 perfect review scores so far, out of 34 on Metacritic – with none coming in at less than a 90. And there are a still a few biggies about to hit!

In other news, UNCHARTED 2 is teaming up with Pepsi! Launching in November 2009, consumers in the West and Midwest regions will have a chance to win PS3 consoles, copies of UNCHARTED 2 and UNCHARTED motion comics through Pepsi promotions. More details to follow soon.

We’re certainly sorry for any inconvenience, but I guess that’s the risk you run when trying to blaze a new trail in the complicated world of Social Media!

And the 140 character version:

Heard concerns about Twitter chapter updates for UNCHARTED 2. We’ve just disabled it but will patch soon to reactivate with frequency limits

I am happy to confirm that it is indeed true, Sony Computer Entertainment has signed a deal with Columbia Pictures for a movie adaptation of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and it will be produced by Avi Arad, Charles Roven, Ari Arad and Alex Gartner. We have been working with Avi and the folks and Columbia for quite some time and look forward to sharing additional details on the film in the short future. Obviously we designed the game to be a cinematic experience and we too can’t wait to see it on the big screen.

So, who do you think should play Nathan Drake?