Last week, we reported on rumors that The Last Of Us 2 Remastered was in the works for PlayStation 5. Hours after that report, Sony made the official announcement , and the reaction to it has certainly been something.
Naughty Dog released a tweet linking to the press release and including the official trailer. The tweet says:
“The Last of Us Part II Remastered is coming to PS5 on January 19, featuring the roguelike mode No Return, three playable Lost Levels with developer commentary, Guitar Free Play, and more.”
They also revealed that people who already own The Last Of Us 2 on PlayStation 4 can just pay $ 10 for an upgrade path to the PlayStation 5 version. Given the additional content, and the easy and cheap upgrade path for old owners, you would think that gamers would be happy with this announcement, right?
As reported by Tech4Gamers, the The Last Of Us 2 Remastered trailer on the PlayStation YouTube channel gathered 50K likes, and also 70k likes, in a matter of 20 hours. Subsequently, the same trailer received 24K dislikes on the IGN YouTube channel, and 4.6K dislikes on the GameSpot YouTube channel. That adds up to 100K dislikes between these three channels.
Tech4Gamers argues that this is a reaction to the perceived underutilization of Naughty Dog. In a span of three years, the company has released three re-releases of their games. That is time that arguably could have been spent making new games. It’s certainly true that other studios have been working on these ports, the likes of Bluepoint Games and Nixxes, but the perception is that Naughty Dog is taking too much attention on these re-releases instead of new games.
If PC ports are included, that goes up to five re-releases. But we would not consider making PC ports itself an issue. We already know that Sony finds the attach rate of their first party games to the PlayStation 5 insufficient, and that PC ports are intended to reach more gamers.
It is definitely an issue that this year’s PC release of The Last Of Us Part 1 Remastered, which was the first time the game was coming to PC, was botched at launch. That did real harm to Sony’s and Naughty Dog’s reputation, but more importantly, it was a terrible deal for PC gamers.
So Sony may have a real problem brewing with discontent among their own customers. Even the cheap upgrade path may not be enough to satisfy them. Anyway, Sony had just announced this title, and they have a few good months to market it, and maybe come up with something else to make PlayStation owners happy.
