PlayStation and its live-service game slate have had a rough patch with several announced games being canceled for one reason or another. The Last of Us Online was one of those games that was canceled in 2023 with Naughty Dog shifting its focus to single-player games instead. That’s despite it having shown promised, according to one person who got to play it.
Former Sony Interactive president Shuhei Yoshida recently spoke on the Sacred Symbols+ podcast (via Push Square) liked the game when he got to try it out, but Naughty Dog realized what it would take to make it work after Bungie highlighted some oversights.
“The idea for The Last of Us Online came from Naughty Dog and they wanted to make it, but Bungie explained [to them] what it takes to make live service games,” he said. “Naughty Dog realized, ‘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 went on to explain that from his experience at least, no development team at PlayStation has been forced to develop a live-service game. The studios pitch games based on the direction they believe the industry is going and develop from there.
“From my experience, when studios see the company has a big initiative, [they realize] riding on that gives them a better chance of getting a project approved and supported,” he added. “It’s not like [current PS Studios boss Hermen Hulst] is telling teams they need to make live service games, it’s likely mutual.”
Sony recently cancelled two live-service projects from Bluepoint and Bend Studio, including a God of War title. At the time of the cancelation of The Last of Us Online, Naughty Dog explained that supporting the game would have required too many of its resources and they’d no longer be able to make single-player games.
“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,” the statement read. “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.”