No 'The Last of Us' is Not Coming Out for PS4

As many of you have probably heard by now, Naughty Dog, the developers behind Uncharted, the hit PlayStation 3 series are delaying The Last of Us. Set in an entirely different world, the ambitious game followers the story of Joel and Ellie in a post apocalyptic world and features the most stunning PS3 graphics to date. The developers have in fact been quoted for saying that they’ve maxed out the PS3 in every way possible. Wanting to release the game to their stands, the games May 7th release date has been pushed back by a month to June 14th, to ensure the team has some more polish time. Talking with the PlayStation Blog, Lead Game Designer Neil Druckmann said,

instead of cutting corners or compromising our vision, we came to the tough decision that the game deserved a few extra weeks to ensure every detail of The Last of Us was up to Naughty Dog’s internal high standards.

As a team we pride ourselves on setting a very high quality bar for every aspect of our games – gameplay, story, art, design, technology and more. We want to make sure The Last of Us raises that bar even further – for ourselves, and most importantly, for you, our fans.

With fans eagerly anticipating the gorgeous looking game and the release date being set unfortunately the day after E3, it didm’t take long for conspiracy theories to pop up. With what will be a PlayStation 4 announcement next week, tin foil wearing fans now believe that the game in fact is no longer destined for the PlayStation 3 and instead will hitch a ride to the PS4. Besides the release date change and PS4 announcement looming, the argument also brings into play the fact that the games last build was shown at E3 2012.

So lets address these things one at a time. First off, in the world of game development, delays happen all the time and the reality is that a month isn’t too far. In fact a month wouldn’t allocate a whole lot of time for Naughty Dog if a true platform change was coming.

Which brings us to our next point; Why would Naught Dog for nearly two years be showing us a PS4 game, dumbed down for the PS3, only to actually announce it for the PlayStation 4 after they’ve revealed pre-order packages and bonuses? In fact, its no secret that the second team at Naughty Dog is probably currently cranking away at what will probably be Uncharted 4 for the PlayStation 4 as The Last of Us was in development during Uncharted 3.

This of course all assumes that there will be a PS4 announcement (which is nearly certain at this point) and that the system will launch in the Summer. That of course, has zero chance of happening as it doesn’t leave Sony nearly enough time to manufacture the system, let a lone get developers properly onboard with final details.

The reality is that as the game is nearing its final build, the developers have continued to find bugs in the game that they wish to squash before releasing the game and going on a patching spree. This is something that the developers should be applauded for and lets be honest, Summer tends to be a horrible time for new game release. Maybe this will break the bare bone cycle of game releases during Summer when we all actually have more time to game.

Of course, watch E3 come by and Sony announces the PlayStation 4 launch the following week with The Last of Us as a launch title.