In September 2021, Naughty Dog confirmed the development of a game The Last of Us multiplayer, after months of rumors. A tempting project, but one that fans feared, the studio is best known for its excellent single-player adventure games. The strategy of Sony was clear at the time: bet everything on games live servicewithout forgetting the solo titles.
Since then, there have been changes, many games live service were pushed back, the investigator of this trend for online titles Jim Ryan left Sony Interactive Entertainment and regarding multiplayer gaming The Last of Us, the development seemed complicated. And today, Naughty Dog speaks to announce sad news: The Last of Us Online is canceled. In a statementthe studio explains:
We realize that many of you have been waiting for news around the project we call The Last of Us Online. There’s no easy way to say it: we have made the incredibly difficult decision to stop development of this game.
We know this news will be difficult for many, especially our dedicated The Last of Us Factions community, who eagerly follow our multiplayer ambitions. We’re just as devastated at the studio, we couldn’t wait to get it into your hands. We wanted to share with you some insight into how we arrived at this decision.
The multiplayer team has been in pre-production on this game since we worked on The Last of Us Part II – creating an experience that we felt was unique and had enormous potential. As the multiplayer team iterated on their concept for The Last of Us Online during this time, their vision crystallized, the gameplay became more refined and satisfying, and we were excited about the direction we were going.
As we reached full production, the scale of our ambition became clear. To release and support The Last of Us Online, we will need to devote all of our studio resources to supporting post-launch content for years, which will have a serious impact on the development of future single-player games. So we had two paths ahead of us: become a studio solely for live service games or continue to focus on single-player narrative games. that defined Naughty Dog’s legacy.
We are immensely proud of everyone at the studio who touched this project. The learnings and technology investments from this game will carry over into how we develop our projects and will be invaluable in the direction we take as a studio. We’re working on more than one brand-new ambitious single-player game at Naughty Dog, and we can’t wait to share more about what’s next when we’re ready.
Until then, we are incredibly grateful to our community for your support over the years.
Naughty Dog has therefore chosen to focus again on single-player games, and many players will approve of this decision. All is not lost, the technologies designed for TLOU Online will be reused in the next project of Naughty Doga solo title as yet unknown.
Gaming strategy live service of Sony takes lead in the wing, but perhaps not worse. The studio will now return to doing what it does best, solo experiences. It will come out elsewhere The Last of Us Part II Remastered next month you can pre-order it from €44.99 on Cdiscount And there Fnac.
| Clint008 Editor – Tester |
