The reported remake of The Last of Us for PS5 might seem like an odd project for Sony, but there's a good reason why the publisher approved it now.
Now that the PlayStation 5 has ushered in a new generation of Sony console technology, the company is reportedly remaking The Last of Us, a critically acclaimed first-party PS3 game and one of the system's last, for PS5. The news came as part of a report that Sony is seemingly expanding the most successful PlayStation franchises instead of taking risks on new IPs. A third release of The Last of Us might seem like an unnecessary undertaking that would distract Naughty Dog from its other franchises, but that reportedly isn't the case.
Up until recently, the push to remake The Last of Us was the passion project of a small team of developers at Sony who originally provided support for bigger studios and wanted to make a name for themselves in the company. The team's original idea was reportedly a remake of the first Uncharted game, but Sony decided against that because getting the 2007 title ready for a PS5 launch would've been too costly. The publisher eventually settled on a TLOU remake because of the relatively low amount of effort it would take and its high potential for profit. Now, the project has been passed to Naughty Dog's core team, supposedly in part because the developer is in limbo.
Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, who originally reported the rumblings within Sony, appeared on The MinnMax Show podcast on April 15 to discuss his article. He revealed that, while the decision to remake The Last of Us might puzzle some fans, it was made because many of Naughty Dog's developers had nothing to do following the 2020 release of The Last of Us 2.
Here's Schreier's full statement, which comes around the 13:30 mark in the video above:
"It’s something for people to do for the next year or so while the other things are in pre-production. ... One of the issues that Naughty Dog has run into in the past when trying to do this whole ... multi-team production thing is that they’ll wind up with a bunch of people who just need stuff to do. They call it 'feeding the beast,' which is a common tech term."
Schreier also mentioned The Last of Us' remake will help get Naughty Dog's devs used to working with the PS5, which they haven't done yet. It might seem Naughty Dog would be better off working on expanding one of the company's other franchises, such as Uncharted, but it seems that's not even an option at the moment. Schreier alluded to studio's creative leads currently being in the midst of drafting new game ideas, which could take months and even years. Naughty Dog took up The Last of Us remake project to keep busy between games, and Sony likely approved it because TLOU 2 was so successful that a low-lift effort to give the franchise more steam could be worth it.
Source: MinnMaxShow/YouTube
