Naughty Dog says The Last of Us multiplayer needs more time

One of the most notable omissions from this week’s PlayStation lineup was anything Naughty Dog. Many (including yours truly) were waiting for the studio to reveal more details about Last of Us multiplayer, but we’ll have to wait a little longer to learn more about this title.

In a statement posted on Twitter, Naughty Dog said: “We’re incredibly proud of the work our studio has done so far, but as development continues, we’ve realized it’s best to give the game more time.” As such, it now seems unlikely that we’ll hear much about the game at Summer Game Fest (where Naughty Dog offered the first glimpse of concept art for the project last year) on June 8th or June 14th, 10 years on. The last of us. Until the PS3.

In a January blog post, Neil Druckmann, co-chairman of The Last of Us and creator of the studio, said the studio would “start bringing you details on the ambitious multiplayer The Last of Us” sometime this year. This suggests that the studio wasn’t planning on releasing the title in 2023. Either way, it’s probably a good idea for Naughty Dog to fix things. The studio wouldn’t want to release a game that surely could have taken more time in the oven, as happened with The Last of Us Part 1’s buggy debut on PC.

Shortly after Naughty Dog released its statement on Twitter, Bloomberg published a report citing multiple unnamed sources that the studio was reconsidering the viability of the multiplayer project. The report claims that the project has not been canceled, but many of the developers working on it have been moved to other projects. Right now, it’s still a “small batch” in the project as Naughty Dog evaluates what’s next.

Sony has also reportedly asked its other research firm, Bungie, to evaluate Naughty Dog’s work on the unnamed multiplayer game Last of Us. It looks like Bungie said they doubt the game will keep players engaged for long. Given Bungie’s success with the Destiny series, it only makes sense that the studio would be asked for their opinion, although it’s also fair to say that Destiny and The Last of Us are very different games.

On the plus side, Naughty Dog says it has (several) other games in development, “including an all-new single-player experience.” It’s been known for a while that the studio has at least one more game in the works, but it’s not clear if this single-player game will continue the main story of The Last of Us. Naughty Dog said it expects to “share more soon.”

Druckmann told Kinda Funny in March. “I can’t say what it is, but it’s a process that we went through, and there was a lot of consideration of different things, and we chose the one that we were most excited about.”

Update, May 26, 2023, 4:20 PM ET: This story has been updated to include information from a report just released by Bloomberg on the future of multiplayer.