While the PlayStation 4 appears to be on its last legs, Sony is shaping up the console’s final year to be a noteworthy one. Fresh of the heels ofDeath Strandingnews, includinga potential leak right before today’s reveal, there is also word that Naughty Dog’s long-anticipatedThe Last of Us Part IIwill come at least a couple of months after the Kojima Productions game. The rumor comes from Jason Schreier, known for his news scoops and overall investigative fervor at Kotaku.
According to Schreier, the post-apocalyptic third-person shooter was originally slated for a fall 2019 release, before apparently being pushed back to early 2020. As anew PlayStation console(let’s do some wild speculation and just call it the “PS5”) isexpected sometime in 2020,The Last of Us Part IIwould effectively act like a swan song to the PS4. Of course, this is assuming that Sony won’t go back on their promise of this and other upcoming exclusive games likeGhost of Tsushimawon’t have cross-generational releases on both the PS4 and PS5.
If anyone were to be a digital fly on the wall on our internal Discord chats, they’d know that the release window forThe Last of Us Part IIhas been the subject of intense debate amongst the DualShockers staff. Withmotion capture sessions said to have ended, andapparent word that development is near an end, some folks within the site were confident enough to put money on a late 2019 release for the game. Should Schreier be correct, they’re going to have to cough out a couple of bucks. (Jeez, I hope my colleagues were all just joking around here.)
It will be strange to have Sony refrain from participating in E3 this year, but it will be even stranger if the company puts out all of this big news right before the event, leading me to question why they dropped out in the first place. Whatever the case, the next year will prove to be a fascinating one for the PlayStation brand.
