Fans have been patiently waiting for word of what Naughty Dog’s next big single-player game will be following The Last of Us Part II and multiple remasters. While studio head Neil Druckmann didn’t hint at what that project might be, he reportedly confirmed during a recent roundtable discussion that he’s been working on his next game since 2020.
The comment came during a Jewish Visionaries in Gaming talk held online this week in which Druckmann appeared alongside Ken Levine of BioShock fame whose own upcoming game, the sci-fi shooter Judas, was revealed with a full trailer earlier this year. While Druckmann, who’s also been busy running Naughty Dog and co-creating the hit HBO adaptation of The Last of Us, didn’t say when his next game would be out, the 2020 marker suggests it might not be too far away at this point.
The roundtable discussion started making the rounds on Reddit earlier today, but the VOD has since been set to private on YouTube. While Kotaku was unable to view the full discussion, another viewer corroborated Druckmann’s mention of the 2020 date. Sony did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Naughty Dog has set the standard for blockbuster storytelling at PlayStation for years, but it’s been a while since the studio teased anything new. A Last of Us Online project that was expected to take the post-apocalyptic zombie survival formula into the live-service genre was suddenly canceled last fall. There’s also been a series of veteran departures at the studio in recent years, with Druckmann taking over as the top manager at Naughty Dog after former co-president Evan Wells left in 2023.
Given current development cycles for the biggest-budget games, it could still be a few more years until Druckmann’s next game, whatever it turns out to be, is actually in players’ hands. Things that used to take three to four years to make are now increasingly taking five to six, especially coming out of the 2020 pandemic. In addition to a new IP, fans have also been waiting to hear about the fate of Uncharted, which has been on ice since 2017’s Lost Legacy.
Druckmann did speak once before about his next game in a now infamous Sony interview that was transcribed so inaccurately, the entire thing had to be taken offline. While the veteran writer and director was ridiculed online for appearing to suggest his next project would “redefine mainstream perceptions of gaming,” he later clarified that he never actually said those words. What he actually said was, “people even outside of gaming are looking at us to see what it is that we put out next.”