The Last of Us multiplayer still needs more time

In June 2022, Naughty Dog announced The Last of Us multiplayer, which is currently in development.
After that, it was relatively quiet around the topic for a long time, until the developers then published a new image of the game at the beginning of 2023 and stated that it was still in development.

Now there is new information about the game’s whereabouts.

Current status of the game

The game was actually meant to be an expansion to The Last of Us 2, but during development the decision was made to make it its own standalone title.
At that time, it was still said that there would be more information about the game soon. That information has now been forthcoming, but it was probably not what many fans were eagerly anticipating.

On Friday, Naughty Dog announced that the game is far from being in a state to be shown – and that this will not change as soon.

The announcement states:

We know many of you have been looking forward to hearing more about our The Last of Us multiplayer game. We’re incredibly proud of the job our studio has done thus far, but as development continued, we’ve realized what is best for the game is to give it more time.

Our team will continue to work on the project, as well as our other games in development, including a brand-new singleplayer experience; we look forward to sharing more soon.

When in doubt, it is of course always better to work on a game calmly and longer without any pressure. Nevertheless, many fans are of course eagerly awaiting the first moving images of the game, which has apparently been in development for three years.

Bungie was not convinced about the game

The portal Bloomberg recently published a report, according to which Sony deliberately slowed down the development of the game and reduced the size of the development team, and also paid special attention to the quality and execution of the implementation.

According to this report, however, the impetus interestingly enough did not come from Naughty Dog or Sony itself, but from another Sony studio – namely Bungie.
The studio known for Destiny 2 was asked by Sony to take a look at all of Sony’s live service games, probably because Bungie has some expertise in this area.
During this review, Bungie probably noted concerns with the “long-term viability” of the game.

This probably resulted in the decision to slow down development and give it more time.

New game teased?

As a small drop of bitterness, Naughty Dog also revealed in the announcement that they are currently working on a “brand new single-player experience”. Proven to be one of the studio’s strengths.

However, it is not yet known what kind of game it will be and whether it will even be a completely new franchise.