The Last of Us Online Was “Great,” Cancelled So Naughty Dog Could Focus on Intergalactic – Yoshida
Shuhei Yoshida, formerly an executive working with PlayStation until this January, has revealed that The Last of Us Online was ultimately cancelled because developer Naughty Dog didn’t have the bandwidth to work on the multiplayer game along with working on their next title. Speaking on the Sacred Symbols+ podcast (via Push Square), Yoshida mentions having played The Last of Us Online, and described it as being “great”.
According to Yoshida, while The Last of Us Online was turning out quite well, Destiny developer Bungie noted that it would have difficulty in retaining players for a longer period of time. This comes down to the fact that it takes a lot of effort for a studio to continuously produce new content to keep players hooked on to a live service game.
The decision was ultimately made at Naughty Dog to start focusing on its next game, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, rather than having the studio split its attention between two titles that would both require quite a bit of work.
“The idea for The Last of Us Online came from Naughty Dog and they really wanted to make it,” said Yoshida. “But Bungie explained [to them] what it takes to make live service games, and Naughty Dog realised, ‘Oops, we can’t do that! If we do it, we can’t make Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.’ So that was a lack of foresight.”
Yoshida also noted in the interview that PlayStation never forced any of its first-party studios to start focusing on live service games. Rather, studios noticed PlayStation’s own focus on live service games, and would pitch their ideas to the company with the hopes of their games getting approved.
“From my experience, when studios see the company has a big initiative, [they realise] riding on that gives them a better chance of getting a project approved and supported,” Yoshida said. “It’s not like [current PS Studios boss Hermen Hulst] is telling teams they need to make live service games, it’s likely mutual.”
The Last of Us Online was one of many
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