After being announced on stage at the Summer Game Fest in June 202 to Geoff Keighley and the spectators, the Naughty Dog officially announced on Thursday (14) that The Last of Us Online is canceled.
The project was eagerly awaited by fans of the franchise, who were clamoring for the return of the Factions mode that existed in the first game of the franchise, both in the PS3 and PS4 versions.
However, the scope of the project was even greater, aiming for a multiplayer mode with a story, something that would probably be close to Ubisoft's The Division. But now the project has been canceled.
The Last of Us Online has been officially canceled; understand why
In a official statement on its website, a Naughty Dog says the following about the The Last of Us be canceled:
"We realize that many of you are anticipating news around the project we're calling The Last of Us Online. There's no easy way to say this: we've made the incredibly difficult decision to stop development on this game.
We know this news will be difficult for many, especially our dedicated The Last of Us Factions community, who have been following our multiplayer ambitions ardently. We're equally crushed at the studio, as we've been looking forward to getting it into your hands. We wanted to share with you a little of how we came to this decision.
The multiplayer team has been in pre-production with this game since we were working on The Last of Us Part II - creating an experience that we felt was unique and had tremendous potential. As the multiplayer team iterated their concept for The Last of Us Online during this time, their vision crystallized, the gameplay became more refined and satisfying, and we were excited about the direction we were going in.
By accelerating full production, the enormous scope of our ambition became clear. To launch and support The Last of Us Online, we would have to put all our studio resources into supporting post-launch content for years to come, severely impacting the development of future single-player games. So we had two paths ahead of us: to become an exclusively live-service games studio or to continue to focus on the single-player narrative games that have defined Naughty Dog's heritage.
We are immensely proud of everyone at the studio who has worked on this project. The learnings and investments in technology from this game will carry over into the way we develop our projects and will be invaluable in the direction we're heading as a studio. We have more than one ambitious new single player game we're working on here at Naughty Dog, and we can't wait to share more about what's next when we're ready.
Until then, we are incredibly grateful to our community for their support over the years."
Basically, the company understands that it would have to spend a lot of resources to maintain TLOU Online on the air. He then decided to change course and focus entirely on campaign games, which had been a hallmark of the studio since its inception.
On the other hand, The Last of Us Part II Remastered arrives on January 19th exclusively for PlayStation 5.
In summary, what do you think about the game's cancellation? Comment below and share it with your friends!
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