The Last Of Us Online Was Played By Shuhei Yoshida, Who Says It ‘Was Great’

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Former PlayStation executive Shuehi Yoshida, who recently departed Sony after more than 30 years with the electronics giant, revealed that he went hands-on with Naughty Dog’s cancelled The Last of Us Online game, and came away quite impressed.

Speaking on the Sacred Symbols+ Podcast, Yoshida-san, who fronted Sony’s indie games department prior to leaving the company, said that he “played the game and it was great.”

The idea for The Last of Us Online came from Naughty Dog and they really wanted to make it. 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.

Yoshida also revealed that as far as he is aware, no first-party development studios at Sony were forced to shift to live service products.

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 [Hermen Hulst, boss of PS Studios] is telling teams they need to make live service games, it’s likely mutual.

The Last of Us Online was cancelled back in December 2023 after many years in development, and was believed to be an extension of the Factions multiplayer mode that featured in the original The Last of Us. Elsewhere, Yoshida told VentureBeat that it ‘feels right‘ if the PS6 were to launch in 2028.

[Source – Sacred Symbols+ via Push Square]