The Last of Us Part II Remastered is a recent release with one of the strangest situations in video games recently. With this new move by Sony, the situation has just become even stranger.
As you may already be aware, Sony sought to sidestep criticism of The Last of Us Part II Remastered by offering an upgrade path to PlayStation 5 owners. The Last of Us Part II originally released on the PlayStation 4 only two years ago.
There can be a debate on the necessity of this particular remaster. The 2020 release of the game is playable on PlayStation 5 via backwards compatibility. But even more than this, it would seem unnecessary to make players pay full price for the same game after only a two year gap.
And so, Naughty Dog and Sony are offering PlayStation owners who already own the 2020 game a $ 10 digital upgrade, so that they can play the remastered version of the game for a comparatively small fee.
Now, as reported by Video Games Chronicle, Naughty Dog has intervened even further. They have revealed in a tweet that they checked on which PlayStation owners pre-ordered the remaster, even though they have the 2020 original version of the game and are eligible for the $ 10 upgrade.
So if they figure out that one of these consumers is eligible, they are immediately refunding the full amount to those players, with a message explaining how they can avail of the upgrade.
Naughty Dog also shares this to those consumers who received a refund:
“Rest assured that by purchasing the digital upgrade, you will also receive any pre-order bonuses included in your original pre-order. The refund amount is paid back to your original payment method.
This may take up to 60 days to appear on your statement. If for any reason we are unable to issue the refund to your original payment method, the amount will be credited to your PlayStation Network wallet.”
So, it’s a gesture of goodwill, for sure. But Naughty Dog is also potentially creating a situation where too many users will be logging in to attempt the $ 10 upgrade on launch day itself.
It’s also somewhat presumptive to take this action, without at least confirming with the consumers themselves. For example, there may be players who now want a physical copy of the game, after enjoying the original digital release on upgrade.
But really, this does not fundamentally fix the real issue with this remaster. Naughty Dog has been releasing too many remakes and remasters of their games. The Last of Us Part II Remastered, in particular, is too close to the release of the original game.
Fans definitely would have wanted to get a new and original game from Naughty Dog by now. That’s even more true now, when Sony is experiencing a dearth of new single-party releases on their platform. Sony fans have something to play, but it’ll be hard to say that what they have is satisfying, especially when one sees how Microsoft has finally burst the dam of their original first-party releases for the Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation’s main opposition.
But maybe Naughty Dog is just biding their time until they reveal they do have an original game in the works, that they simply had to keep quiet about. Hopefully, if such a game does exists, they can tell us about it sooner rather than later.
