Naughty Dog first confirmed the existence of The Last Of Us Online last year, calling it Naughty Dog's “biggest online multiplayer experience.” However, following recent rumors and official confirmation, it is sad to say that Naughty Dog has officially cancelled The Last Of Us Online.
Naughty Dog posted “An Update On The Last Of Us Online” on their official blog. They said that many players “have been anticipating news around the project that we've been calling The Last Of Us Online.” Although this normally sparks excitement in players, their next words were anything but exciting. After all, they said that they have “made the incredibly difficult decision to stop development on that game.”
They mentioned that the game had been in pre-production ever since they started work on the second game and that they were “crafting an experience [they] felt was unique and had tremendous potential.” In fact, it went so well that “their vision crystalized, the gameplay got more refined and satisfying, and [they] were enthusiastic about the direction in which [they] were headed.”
However, they realized that there was a problem. Should they release the online game, they would need to use all of the resources they had “behind supporting post launch content for years to come.” According to them, this would severely impact their ability to develop future single-player games. That's why they had to make a decision: “become a solely live service games studio or continue to focus on single-player narrative games that have defined Naughty Dog’s heritage.” As you can probably guess, they decided to go with the latter.
That doesn't mean though that it was a failure. Naughty Dog is “immensely proud of everyone at the studio that touched this project.” They followed this up by saying that they have “more than one ambitious, brand new single player game” that they are working on, something for players to look forward to.
While it is sad that The Last Of Us Online is no longer going to come out, it does sound promising when Naughty dog mentioned that they were going to use everything they learned to make sure that future games would benefit from the lessons they learned. That gives us players something to become excited about in the future.
We don't know if this cancellation will lead to a delay in The Last Of Us 3, or if this game was meant to be the third game in the series. Should more information become available, we will be sure to let you know.
That's all the information we have about The Last Of Us Online being officially cancelled by Naughty Dog. Check out our gaming news articles for the latest in gaming news.
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