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The Last of Us Online has been cancelled

Moses85

Member
Put a bullet in TLOU3 next, and make something new.
Mike Myers No GIF
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
You might not want to admit it, but GAAS is where all the innovation and creativity resides in the industry now. We're firmly in the formulaic era when it comes to AAA SP. What area do you think more risk + failure is going to happen?
I don't really agree with that premise, but even were it true, that doesn't say anything about what this game was. The only indication we have that it was groundbreaking or whatever is from the studio themselves, and they canceled it.

A few months ago it started leaking that this game just wasn't good enough and had to be majorly retooled and that's likely the situation, they weren't building a space shuttle just making a shitty MP game.
 
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proandrad

Member
Good, we don’t need to lose another studio to the cancer that is gaas. If this game was successful you could pretty much say goodbye to naughty dog ever making another big budget single player game.
 

Woggleman

Member
Good, we don’t need to lose another studio to the cancer that is gaas. If this game was successful you could pretty much say goodbye to naughty dog ever making another big budget single player game.
Not entirely true. GTA online is hugely successful and we are still getting another SP GTA game thought it took long enough.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
I don't really agree with that premise, but even were it true, that doesn't say anything about what this game was. The only indication we have that it was groundbreaking or whatever is from the studio themselves, and they canceled it.

Oh I don't think it was groundbreaking. It was likely one of the weakest games in PlayStations 12+ Live Service games. From what Naughty Dog wrote, it required a lot of content from them to keep players engaged...which corresponds with the Bungie leak earlier this year suggesting it suffered from player engagement problems. To me, that's a sign of a bad multiplayer game.

I just can't believe Naughty Dog didn't spend the last 6 years making a AAA Day Z. The formula is right in front of them.
 
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Bartski

Gold Member
on the upside, if no return really is as good as I'm hearing, right now there is no more reason for ND not to try patch in PvE, all the components seem to be in place. Salvaging the project for a "simple" MP mode for Part 2 would be amazing news.
 

Woggleman

Member
And that gta online trash is the reason we won’t see red dead 3 for another 10 years.
True but at the end of day blame the people who keep buying shark cards.

I don't think that TLOU online would have been as successful. GTA online works because they are always dangling new toys in front of players to buy with their shark cards. TLOU is limited in how many toys players can buy.
 
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Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
True but at the end of day blame the people who keep buying shark cards.

I don't think that TLOU online would have been as successful. GTA online works because they are always dangling new toys in front of players to buy with their shark cards. TLOU is limited in how many toys players can buy.

What percentage of players buy shark cards in GTA Online?

You don't know because Rockstar doesn't divulge that information.

GTA Online is successful because it's fun to play in a sandbox world with other people.

Some of y'all really tinfoil hat these MTX.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
on the upside, if no return really is as good as I'm hearing, right now there is no more reason for ND not to try patch in PvE, all the components seem to be in place. Salvaging the project for a "simple" MP mode for Part 2 would be amazing news.
That would be the right thing to do for lou2 in 2020. Not every MP mode has to be giant in scope like COD or Fortnite. From what I remember, people even said factions 1 was good. So just expand on that with the 7 years of dev time from lou1 to lou2. They could already had 3 years of lou2 MP gaming with whatever revenue they’d make of mtx.

But they got the GAAS treasure chest itch of unlimited reoccurring leprechaun money dangled in their face as all the studios who make GAAS games always talk about it in their quarterly earnings reports like it’s the jackpot of gaming. Sony can’t do that because the only GAAS they have is GT but that’s not on the same level as a FIFA or Minecraft etc…

Since Sony is one of the huge gaming companies it finally got to them. They’d been SP focused first party gaming since PS4 launched. But all the articles you read about COD mtx and Fortnite monthly revenue was too big to ignore. All us gamers only read some of that kind of info which is public. Just imagine all the datasets they get internally from research companies showing the GAAS revenue per game. So they wanted in on it.

It’s no different than my company. Publicly all you can get is maybe some high level market share data between brands. That’s kind of it. And it’s going to be outdated too since it’s not like this data is publicly updated every month. But research companies we hire give full details on unit and $$& sales per item, per store, per week for all competing products. The metrics even go further like avg sales per store or distribution point, per tonnage (that’s a different kind of metric based where the products are standardized best as possible apples to apples based on product sizing…. Like a 1 litre unit is worth more than 1 unit that is 500 ML.)
 
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DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
I think the management slipped when Jim took over. Atleast, they seem to be making moves to potentially be back on track from next year.

Hopefully there hasn't been too much damage. I imagine the never officially announced horizon game is dead too.
 
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I think the management slipped when Jim took over. Atleast, they seem to be making moves to potentially be back on track from next year.

Hopefully there hasn't been too much damage. I imagine the never officially announced horizon game is dead too.
It may be one of the projects that are being reworked a bit. A bunch of them got cancelled, while many others have shifted. Costs of GAAS are too high for Sony to stomach.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I think the management slipped when Jim took over. Atleast, they seem to be making moves to potentially be back on track from next year.

Hopefully there hasn't been too much damage. I imagine the never officially announced horizon game is dead too.
Given their track record, the right thing to do is keep on doing their giant selling SP games and partnership deals for the rest.

It’s not like MS buying Activision started it. It was already well in motion. Sony even still has COD gaming for another 10 years which would make it in PS systems well into PS6 with PS7 around the corner. So there is nothing to really be worried about. Maybe that’s one reason they axed Lou online: they don’t need it for competitive online gamers since COD is locked in till like 2034.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
It may be one of the projects that are being reworked a bit. A bunch of them got cancelled, while many others have shifted. Costs of GAAS are too high for Sony to stomach.
They promoted like 10 new GAAS games in 2022 on the slides. What they should had done if they still are itching for mtx sales is focus on a couple bangers.

They already made a mistake during PS3 where they shotgunned a ton of shooters hoping one stuck. Every other company stuck with either 1 shooter (COD) or 2 shooters tops (gears and halo) or (moh and BF). Sony tried to take them all on with Kz, resistance, Warhawk/star hawk, mag, socoms, and those PC MMO ports. There is no way the PS shooter fanbase can support them all, nor can all of the games be great when there’s so many.

They spread the fanbase so thin none of them stuck. Gamers preferred the giant online gamer base of COD or BF.
 
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Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
They promoted like 10 new GAAS games in 2022 on the slides.
12+.

If you look at PlayStations studios, there are more than 12 teams who are hiring for Live Service positions.

What many people here don't realize is that it's impossible to make a huge AA SP game with a 100 person studio. We're in the AAA or bust era with SP games. GAAS multiplayer doesn't suffer from that problem.
 

gamer82

Member
could they not use some of what they've created and just add it as modes for last of us 2 remastered down the line . they can at least get somting out of the time and effort put into the development surley a small group could work on that while they work on thier new games.
 
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Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
could they not use some of what they've created and just add it as modes for last of us 2 remastered down the line . they can at least get somting out of the time and effort put into the development surley a small group could work on that while they work on thier new games.

It likely wasn't close to being finished. We never even got a vague gameplay trailer. It was probably stuck in pre production hell the entire time.
 
Now drop the Horizon multiplayer as well. Actually, drop everything Horizon.
what with the success of factions, the idea behind tlou online sorta made some sense. horizon multiplayer, otoh, has never made any friggin' sense whatsoever to anyone other than hermen hulst...
 

Trilobit

Member
Every time I heard about this Factions thing my reaction was "huh?". TLoU is like the singlest of all single player games. Its inner core is a narrative driven game. Glad they are back on track.
 

RoboFu

One of the green rats
Times are hard at Sony it seems, lay offs, canceled projects.

Now we know why Jim is leaving… his gambling and cocaine addiction is bringing the company down.
 

gow3isben

Member
Bungie already earned back its asking price for this amazing news. Hope all other PlayStation studios follow.

Single player is the way.
 
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Varteras

Member
Times are hard at Sony it seems, lay offs, canceled projects.

Now we know why Jim is leaving… his gambling and cocaine addiction is bringing the company down.

GIF of Jim doing coke off Margot Robbie's tits from Wolf of Wall Street! GO!
 
I would like to publicly apologize to Jim Ryan for accusing him of lying when he said no PlayStation studio was as talented as ABK on the live-service front.

Turns out he was telling the truth.
 

Represent.

Banned
They literally stopped developing the game not because they thought it would fail, but because they thought it would succeed and change the entire studio make up.

This is utterly fantastic news the more I break it down further.

They quite literally said no to a bag of Live Service money in order to stay TRUE TO THEIR ROOTS
 
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Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
They literally topped developing the game not because they thought it would fail, but because they thought it would succeed and change the entire studio make up.

This is utterly fantastic news the more I break it down further.

They quite literally aid no to a bag of Live Service money in order to stay TRUE TO THEIR ROOTS

Hard to tell what's PR spin there and what's not.

The fact that they felt the game needed to have heavy support from the full Naughty Dog studio to keep players engaged long term is definitely not a sign of quality.

Light No Fire is a game made by ~20 people. They're confident in it because sandbox design is so much more replayable and doesn't require new content from hundreds of employees all the time.

Naughty Dog started out with a dumb idea (most likely).
 
Hard to tell what's PR spin there and what's not.

The fact that they felt the game needed to have heavy support from the full Naughty Dog studio to keep players engaged long term is definitely not a sign of quality.

Light No Fire is a game made by ~20 people. They're confident in it because sandbox design is so much more replayable and doesn't require new content from hundreds of employees all the time.

Naughty Dog started out with a dumb idea (most likely).

I mean it is definitely spin.

If the game was going so well that they thought it would take over their identity similar to how Bungie went from making games like Halo to games like Destiny, they had a couple different paths to proceed.

Either you grow exponentially to accommodate both or you farm out the game to a different studio like Sony Bend. If they believed in the game they wouldn't outright cancel it and not even release it as DLC.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I mean it is definitely spin.

If the game was going so well that they thought it would take over their identity similar to how Bungie went from making games like Halo to games like Destiny, they had a couple different paths to proceed.

Either you grow exponentially to accommodate both or you farm out the game to a different studio like Sony Bend. If they believed in the game they wouldn't outright cancel it and not even release it as DLC.
So true,

Name one company who has a product in development that is humming along well, looking good and projected to be a big money maker suddenly getting cancelled because the staff would have to work on another project concurrently, as if the department is destined to never grow bigger?

The game was probably in bad shape or they (and Bungie) couldnt figure to how to monetize it properly like a Destiny, so Sony axed it.
 
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So true,

Name one company who has a product in development that is humming along well, looking good and projected to be a big money maker suddenly getting cancelled because the staff would have to work on another project concurrently, as if the department is destined to never grow bigger?

The game was probably in bad shape or they (and Bungie) couldnt figure to how to monetize it properly like a Destiny, so Sony axed it.

Even if it couldn't be monetized, releasing it as an online DLC for 20 dollars still makes more sense than canceling it.

So either this game has been in development hell for years or it never had the requisite resources to make it.

I think we all assume that the majority of resources went to this game because they were making it since TLOU2 but we have no idea how many people actually worked on it. They haven't had major layoffs, so I'm guessing it was a somewhat limited development team and they've simply decided to stop putting resources towards and and want to get TLOU3 out as quickly as possible. They have roughly 3-5 years to get that game out in time for Season 4, assuming Seasons 2 and 3 run the course of TLOU2 and assuming that season 2 is out in a year and there about 18 months in between Seasons 2 and 3.

Now assuming they have an original IP that they want to release within the next 2 years as well, it makes sense to not keep pouring resources into the online game if it isn't coming to fruition.

They probably gave the team a second shot after Bungie looked at it has probably been nearly a year since Bungie assessed the game give or take a couple months from when the news came out and a recent assessment probably said just can the game.
 
What's so gross about this decision is that they're not making good on their promise that there'd be another competetive multiplayer LoU, considering how great the first Factions was. Just give people a stripped down version. Now there's NO WAY TO EVEN PLAY multiplayer with modern performance considering these bums didn't even include Factions in the LoU1 $70 Remake!

I swear Naughty Dog has really been showing their true colors this gen. Yes, I'm annoyed with them after how they talked up the LoU1 Remake and had the nerve to charge $70 for a ps5 remake that was a glorified ps4 game.
 
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