The Last Of Us Online Has Been Canceled
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The Last of Us is one of the hottest properties in gaming right now, after The Last of Us Part 2 released to stellar reviews and sales and the series got a huge boost from The Last of Us’ HBO series. The next game in the series was set to be an online multiplayer game, but unfortunately, it’s never going to be released.
Naughty Dog, the developer of The Last of Us and a subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment, revealed in a statement on its website that development for The Last of Us Online has been stopped. The game was announced at roughly the same time as The Last of Us 2, although it was early in development and did not have a release window set.
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Naughty Dog says that the scope of the project, combined with the priorities of the team, meant that in order to develop and release the live service title, the developer would need to “become solely a live service games studio.”
“In ramping up to full production, the massive scope of our ambition became clear,” Naughty Dog’s statement reads, “To release and support The Last of Us Online we’d have to put all our studio resources behind supporting post launch content for years to come, severely impacting development on future single-player games.
“So, we had two paths in front of us: become a solely live service games studio or continue to focus on single-player narrative games that have defined Naughty Dog’s heritage.”
The developer insists that it wasn’t all for naught, though, saying that the “learnings and investments in technology” from developing The Last of Us Online will help with future projects. As for what those projects are, Naughty Dog is keeping tight-lipped, but it does say it has “more than one” big single player game in the works.
It’s probably for the best, though, that Naughty Dog gave up on its lofty live service ambitions. We’ve seen developers for single player games pivot to live service games in the past, either through choice or by executive mandate, and they’ve traditionally not done super well.
Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad game looks to be following the same path, if gameplay previews are anything to go by, and WB Games says it wants to focus even more on live service games in the future.
