Naughty Dog Hoping to Avoid Stress by Announcing Games Closer to Launch

It seems we won't be hearing about the company's projects years in advance anymore.
Text: Alex Hopley
Published 2023-01-09

Neil Druckmann has stated that Naughty Dog isn't going to be officially unveiling its upcoming titles until they're closer to launch, which will allow the studio to play around with the schedule and avoid stress and crunch.

"We did announce Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us Part 2 way in advance, but that actually caused a little bit of the work-life balance issues that we've sometimes had at the studio," Druckmann said to Comicbook.com. "By delaying that announcement a bit, we could play with the schedule more and we're more conscious now about how we're approaching production. So there's our [The Last of Us] multiplayer project and there's another project that I will not say anything about that's beyond that that we're also very much excited for."

Currently, we know Naughty Dog are set to be working on two titles, one of which being The Last of Us multiplayer spin-off Druckmann mentioned. The other game is said to be The Last of Us Part 3, but we haven't yet had anything official on that and probably won't for some time.

It might be better for the health and work-life balance of developers to announce games later, but in Naughty Dog's case, we already know their next title is likely going to be The Last of Us' multiplayer spin-off. So, even though there's not been a release date revealed as yet, there will be plenty of people already building up there expectations for that game.

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