Fans of The Last of Us left Wednesday’s PlayStation Showcase empty-handed after expecting to hear about a multiplayer version of the franchise, which has been in talks since 2018 and was due to release this year. . On Friday, Naughty Dog more or less stated that the idea, while still in development, needs more time and doesn’t have a release window in mind.
In a statement published on Twitter, the studio didn’t say The Last of Us multiplayer gameplay was delayed indefinitely, but it also didn’t say when or if that idea might actually come to PlayStation. “As development continued, we realized that what was best for the game was to give it more time,” the studio said.
According to a report by Bloombergwhich accompanied Naughty Dog’s statement (and appears to have prompted its publication), the team working on The Last of Us multiplayer spin-off has been “trimmed down after a recent assessment” and that “many of its developers have been moved to other projects.”
Naughty Dog said the development of this multiplayer escape from The last of us part 2, launched in 2020, will continue. He’s also working on “other games in development, including a new single-player experience.” It’s intriguing, because in January studio co-president Neil Druckmann said they were made with the Uncharted franchise (despite intimations of a sequel there) and moving on to new things.
Fans thought they’d get a word on the standalone multiplayer adaptation of The Last of Us during Wednesday’s PlayStation Showcase, mainly because it’s been talked about for so long and, sure enough, the series just got a huge star turn with a television adaptation on HBO, which premiered in January and ended in March.
the original The last of us featured an online multiplayer component called Factions, which featured a variety of modes for up to eight players on reworked parts of the game’s campaign maps.