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William D’Angelo
, posted 18 hours ago / 796 Views
The former President of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida with the Sacred Symbols + podcast revealed he had played the Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Online and revealed “it was great.”
“The idea for The Last of Us Online came from Naughty Dog and they really wanted to make it,” said Yoshida (via PushSquare). “But Bungie explained [to them] what it takes to make live service games, and Naughty Dog realised, ‘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.”
He added, “From my experience, when studios see the company has a big initiative, [they realise] riding on that gives them a better chance of getting a project approved and supported. It’s not like [current PS Studios boss Hermen Hulst] is telling teams they need to make live service games, it’s likely mutual.”
Naughty Dog ended up cancelling The Last of Us Online in December 2023. The studio last December did announce Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet for the PlayStation 5, which has been in development since 2020.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D’Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Bluesky.