The much-cited Bloomberg report on Sony’s obsession for blockbuster titles not only addresses the controversy over a new Uncharted from the unenthusiastic Sony Bend Studio, but also a remake of The Last of Us for the PS5. This should still be in work, but apparently also caused a lot of trouble at Sony.
Like the well-informed and mostly very reliable Jason Schreier via Bloomberg reports, Naughty Dog is working on a PS5 remake of The Last of Us. This should therefore be expected in the medium term, even if official confirmation is still pending. Before that, the game caused quite a stir at Sony.
Accordingly, the Visual Arts Service Group at Sony was initially given the work on such a remake of The Last of Us. This is a development team that mostly works in the background for Sony and has helped with Spider-Man and Uncharted, for example. 30 members were supposed to lift The Last of Us up to the latest technical standard in the course of the remake.
Although this development team initially pushed the work on the remake with the green light from Sony, the budget was rather limited, which led to disappointments for the team. As a result, some members left the Visual Arts Service Group, which is led by Michael Mumbauer.
A new person in charge at Sony also came to the conclusion that the project was still too expensive, which is why Mumbauer’s team was finally withdrawn and “condemned” to help Naughty Dog with the completion of The Last of Us: Part II. When the work on the sequel was finished, Sony hired Naughty Dog members to continue working on the remake, which was again anything but well received by Mumbauer’s team. The Visual Arts Service Group felt hurt in its autonomy regarding the project that had been worked on for so long. It appears that Sony had more faith in the members of Naughty Dog than in the developers originally commissioned. According to the report, Mumbauer and most of the team members of the Visual Arts Service Group therefore left the project by December 2020.
For fans of The Last of Us, the story is far from over – as mentioned at the beginning. Reason: Naughty Dog has remained loyal to the remake ever since; according to Schreier, this is still in progress. However, there is no release date yet.
Together with Chandler Riggs you can dive into the already phenomenal first part of The Last of Us shortly before the release of the second part.
