Rumour: Naughty Dog's Troubled The Last of Us Multiplayer PS5 Project Was Sniped by Bungie

@kyleforrester87 You would hope so, having been acquired for $3.6 billion.

They probably killed the deviation game too. Kind of weird that Sony is using them as experts to judge their live service titles when every live service titles is bungies competition

Hmm makes sense…. Never played something from Bungie as every game after halo was Destiny right? Always felt like a game you can only play while neglecting the remainder of your game collection. Same reason why I never played fortnite or Apex Legends.

I do however played all naughty dog games… maybe Sony is not interested in people like me as I’m no person who purchases additional skins etc.

@kyleforrester87 Are you trying to say that Bungie has always been a Microsoft plant and its real purpose is to corrupt and destroy PlayStation Studios from within?

I’m just not interested in this Factions thing at all. Always felt like a waste of a good studio. At least ND are working on a SP game too but it’s probably TLoU3 sadly 🥱. It’s all very safe at Sony HQ lately.

This makes sense to me, the development on it seemed to be suspect ever since it was split off from Part II in my opinion.

I disagree. Naughty dog is Sony's star studio. They should let them release an unfiltered naughty dog game. After all, the first tlou multiplayer was naughty dog and remained popular for a long time without neccessarily encouraging the tricks live service uses to retain players.

This sounds like they focused more on the gameplay of tlou (say what you will, tlou 2 shooting was absolute nerve wracking which is why I was excited) and Bungie was like 'where's the live service elements' and now we might never see what could have been a true sequel to tlou 1 multiplayer.

I hope this knocks Sony in to re-evaluating this all out live service push, but as for this situation, I'm terrified of how much influence Bungie has gained in such a short time. I can't stress this enough, Destiny 2 is the most over monetized, FOMO using, engagement baiting game ever. Every corner of that game has a price tag on top of annual full price expansions.
Naughty Dog is one of Sony's crown jewels, the fact that they got their game shutdown by the new kids in town is just wild.

Good, I have faith in Bungie. The only studio's services I would play (And Helldivers, Helldivers is great).

Sony clearly has a quality bar. It reminds me back to the ‘Nintendo stamp of approval’ days.

It’s why Days gone 2 didn’t happen. It was good, but not great.

Bungie being in charge of approving live service/GAAS makes total sense. They have experience & know what does & won’t work.

LOL and it hasn't even started yet.

I think this GaaS wave will end sooner than we think.

I have said it a lot of times but bungie live service model is the worst in the business they took away paid content away from the customers. Yet this site still big them up as saviours. If bungie is in charge of there gaas program then most of them will fail!

Naughty Dog hasn't been the flagship Playstation studio since 2018 anyways.
Insomniac Games is the one that defines Playstation now.
These guys create worlds, characters, dialogs, gameplays, music and much more that Playstation players resonate with.

I really wish, Sony shut down some more useless studios and redirect these resources to Insomniac Games to grow them even bigger and have even a more frequent output than they already have.

@kyleforrester87 Yet Bungie (probably) rubber stamped Fairgame$$$
Probably aggressive monopolisation of player time and money over game quality. Time will tell but I think being cynical is the correct attitude to all this GaaS.

While I appreciate that Bungie would know a thing or two about how to run a live service...I do have to ask if something as generic as Fairgame$ got a pass...what was it that was so bad Factions had to hit the brakes?

My oh my what I wouldn't give to have been a fly on the wall during that presentation.

What's it got to do with Bungie? It's not like Naughty Dog is incompetent is it, they know what they're doing with there track record. Why are Sony allowing Bungie to dictate what happens with this game.

The only good live service game is a canceled live service game. I hope Sony fails this live service nonsense and goes back to what they do best. Heck if AAA is getting to expensive and conplicated, just trim down the scope. 10 hour games is perfectly fine, like ”rift apart” or ”miles morales”. Even Demons Souls isnt that big but still is one (if not the) of the best experiences of the generation.

@practicein2021 That’s not really up for me anyone on message boards to decide. People way smarter make that decision. I platinumed Days Gone & thought it was good, but it wasn’t up to the standard of a Ghost, GOW,TLOUS2… .
If it was up to me we’d be on Gravity Rush 6 by now, but it isn’t.

@JAMes-BroWWWn
Woah woah woah. Hold up. Insomniac is great and all but Naughty Dog is far from a "useless" studio. While their output isn't as fast as Insomniac's I wouldn't put any of Insomniac's games on the level of any of Naughty Dog's work.

Naughty Dog puts out high prestige products while Insomniac, again no disrespect intended, generally puts out solid great games. Both have a place in the industry but bottom line even if you didn't like TLOU2 Naughty Dog has basically had a flawless record for Playstation.

This f***ing obsession with live-service games will be the downfall of PlayStation.

All of this reminds me to Marvel’s Avengers, where Square Enix forced Crystal Dynamics (a studio renowned in making single-player games) into making a live-service multiplayer game, and we know how that turned out with a big failure and even Square selling off Crystal Dynamics for scraps.

Let that be a lesson to Sony, don’t force your studios into making something they’re not familiar with or even uncomfortable making it, 3 years of development time is HUGE waste of Naughty Dog’s time, at this rate we’ll be lucky if we get a single game from them in the entire generation, which is beyond disappointing.

@KaijuKaiser I’m not anti live service games - I already play Fortnite (and have done for years). I played Fall Guys and Mutliversus for a while but have abandoned them now. People who like live service games aren’t looking for a new live service game if the one they’re heavily invested in is still entertaining. Fortnite already fills that position for me and I can’t see it changing any time soon. Live service games are time consuming so it’s hard to be invested in more than one at a time, especially if you’re juggling your gaming time with SP games too. There just isn’t enough time to play everything. My problem with Sony is that they just aren’t innovative anymore. They make safe games and chase trends.

Cancel them all.

I thought it was just going to be a multiplayer, not a live service? Why does everything have to be, surely they can just drop some DLC and let it do whatever it does. Never mind, squeeze those whales.

@get2sammyb I agree, and it isn’t like Naughty Dog has no experience into making multiplayer games, Uncharted 2, 3, 4 and TLOU had pretty great multiplayer modes, so i just don’t get that after 3 years of full development they’re basically pausing development because a newly acquired studio suggested it, wasting almost half the generation into a game that just won’t come out and honestly maybe never will.

Can Bungie assess all of Sony's live service titles and say "Nope" thus saving us the tedium of seeing them all flop.

@doctommaso Never has a truer statement been made. Sony's plan to being a dominant force is to delve into the murky depths of live service failure so that they too can release flops that make no money and tarnish their developers names.

Okay, really though, what on earth is going on with Sony and Xbox this generation? This has got to be one of the most bumbling console generations I have ever seen.

@get2sammyb Fairgame looked as generic as Saints Row. All that groansome 'hipsters on the make'. Looks like it'll be sleeping next to the Titanic two weeks after release

@Korgon I didn't mean Naughty Dog is the one being useless but just generally spoken about some Playstation studios being useless.
And I loved The Last of Us Pt. 2. I think it's a masterpiece.
All I'm saying is Naughty Dog isn't the same from the PS3 era when they blessed the Playstation Nation with 4 defining video games.
The flapship has been exchanged.

@get2sammyb
That's the million dollar question I have now too. Naughty Dog maybe hasn't done a live service multiplayer game before but they have done multiplayer before. (and have been pretty good at it too. I personally really liked both Uncharted and TLOU1 multiplayer efforts)

I find it a bit difficult to believe Fairgame$ made the cut and not Factions.

Something about all this doesn't sit well. Too many cooks in the kitchen and all that

So the game didn't have enough skins to unlock to keep people playing/paying to unlock the "best" ones. That seems to be the driver of most live service games. That and the game has to be fun to play in the first place. I would like to think ND nailed that part.

bring Socom II back, I could play this 24/7

@JAMes-BroWWWn
Fair enough I must have misunderstood you. I would argue most of Sony's 1st party studios are great...well at least the proven ones like Insomniac, Naughty Dog, Guerilla, Sucker Punch, Bend, etcetera.

The jury is still out though on some of these recent pickups like Haven.

@get2sammyb I reckon so. Fairgame$ seems like a PayDay meets Division kind of game.
Concord is a literal nothing burger.

Bungie probably didn’t like or weren’t impressed with whatever Deviation Games were doing, told Sony & Hulst had the unfortunate task of shutting that down.

Quality over Quantity. Always.

GEE, THANKS BUNGIE. Now we might not even get any multiplayer at all. I think most players wanted something simple, similar to the first except with the new mechanics and graphics. It's a side mode, ffs.

If they're abandoning it because they couldn't monetize it effectively (presumably they'd just have cosmetics like before, maybe a battle pass, which just sounds wrong now that I actually type it), then that's just dumb and anti-consumer. Boooo!!!

Im still a traditionalist when it comes to multiplayer. Sell me the ***** game with a decent amount of maps/unlocks and we'll go from there.

I really hate the fortnite/apex etc etc model. It's why I just play Battlefield 4 still til this day when I want want my multiplayer fix. I hate this balancing act Naughty Dog has to do. And Bungie is having to oversee it and all the other gaas projects. It freaking sucks. It's part of the reason why im not looking forward to any of them despite not even knowing what most are.

I dread to see the effect Bungie is going to have on PlayStation.

In 7 years time, they will be in a panic to correct course.

@B_Lindz IKR. It's like...just make games, stop doing weird stuff. That's the problem with publicly-held companies. The investors want their stocks to increase in price, so here comes all the live service stuff, safe sequels, and drip-feed game subscription services for old games.

I mean, imagine if you invested in PlayStation stock. Would you rather have them make a risky new game IP, a remake of an old successful game, or a reboot of an old beloved franchise that's a live service game built around FOMO and a mobile game economy?

Say what you will about Bungie but Destiny 2 is one of the biggest games on the planet and one of the bihgest live service games on the planet, not only that Bungie pretty much invented the modern day live service formula. If Bungie didn't like what they saw with Factions then chances are it was for good reason.

Funny. Destiny didn't hold me for more than 2 hours. Let Naughty Dogs teach them how to make a mp game lmao.

@practicein2021

I think if you can keep player engangement without updates, it says which is the better developer.

@JAMes-BroWWWn

You mean 3 games using the same exact New York map?

Insomniac is not even in the top 3. I'd say Guerrilla is better and which are the other is obvious (not sucker punch)

I was far more engaged with Factions than anything to do with Destiny. I just wasn't spending any money, and I'm guessing that's what this is really all about. Sounds to me like Naughty Dog have been told that they were focusing too much on making the game fun and not thinking enough about how to exploit people with addictive tenancies.

@IOI

Insomniac, Guerrila and ND have done good multiplayer games back then and can probably still do. I haven't heard Sucker Puncha and SSM doing since they are no good there.

@AdamNovice @get2sammyb @Shepherd_Tallon Here's some info on fairgame$ in which they say what type of game it is and what it involves.

You go around different locations around the world in search of heists and there's even a sandbox element to it apparently.

https://blog.playstation.com/2023/05/24/introducing-fairgame-a-competitive-heist-experience-coming-to-ps5-and-pc/

@B_Lindz

I think they both underestimated just how much modern development would cost and how time consuming it would be.

@Shepherd_Tallon What billionaire did you put for a spanking.

I went for Satya 😅

@GodofCapcom Sucker Punch had a Ghost of Tsushima online mode which was pretty decent, I could imagine them making a ghost of tsushima multiplayer game that's similar to For Honor, but I doubt it would be popular enough.

@WallyWest

It’s also hideously exploitable how Destiny 2 nickle and dimes you.

That’s why I gave up on it real fast and went back to Fortnite for my live service multiplayer fix. It has its own problems, but it doesn’t act like a damn loan shark.

And if this is true this is just utterly depressing.

@practicein2021 To be picky it was Dota that made the first battle pass in 2013, But Fortnite was probably the one that normalised it on consoles.

@reek I believe you are right. Retention mechanics usually make games worse. Typically more grindy and gambly in order to artificially extend play hours or as they say "engagement".

@UltimateOtaku91 pretty decent is enough. I think so too

not enough paid cosmetics and mtx to their liking then? this must be frustrating for nd to endure... an outsider suddenly has a say over their project. i won't be surprised if the new changes make this game significantly worse as far as the business model is concerned.

@practicein2021 I think the "fair" part is about robbing scumbag billionaires, as they get robbed its only "fair" as these billionaire's do the same by robbing the poor to get rich. It's all fair game 😁

That's my thinking anyway.

@Shepherd_Tallon Same with me, reading that article got me more excited for the game than the actual trailer did, was more informative too lol

Can we all just agree that Bloomberg are not merely incompetent journalists but actively lie to get views? I think we should have all worked that out by now after the PSVR2 fiasco

Jim Ryan and Bungie need to leave, they don't fit in with Playstation, they would fit in better with the Xbox side TBH.
If I wanted to play FOMO+Microtransactions live service games, I would buy Xbox instead of Playstation.

Yep, I'm sure it was all Bungie's idea, and the lack of interest for this release shown by a lot of gamers had nothing to do with its re-evaluation...
Imo ND will be concentrating on The Last Of Us Part 3 main game, and will include Factions into it as a package deal (aka safety net, because the main game will definitely sell like hot cakes)... but time will tell.

@thefourfoldroot1 Those articles were from other journalists at Bloomberg. As this Push Square article states: "This is according to a Bloomberg article by the reliable Jason Schreier".

Oh Sony, you done Fed up....

You know damn well why they did this. Monetization potential("longevity").

@IslandLogic
If they have a general editor who seemingly cares nothing about facts then why would you trust anything from that rag? And Pushsquare seemingly thought the last guy was reliable too, or why would they have advertised what he said?

@NoHope SOCOM II is the best online game ever. Nothing even comes close to how that was back in the day.

BS probably. I bet we get a good chunk of the game shown at SGF.

Bungie have only made Destiny in the last decade and in that time Destiny 2 & it's Destiny 2 DLC flopped hard, the original Destiny was never a live service game that came latter with Destiny 2 after people had already paid full price for Destiny 2. If Bungie have had success with multiple live service game's I would understand taking advance off one studio but they haven't.

Sony not trusting Naughty Dog after all they have done is wild.

The factions multiplayer should've remained an addon whether free or paid inclusive of the mtx sustaining things from there.

Unfortunately Jim Ryan/Herman Hulst's desire to ramp up the live service games portfolio meant they were all too willing to greenlight Factions as a standalone project as its potential "Fortnite" goldmine.🤔
To be fair Shawn Layden readily admitted in his era they "needed to do more" in that area,but when you only have so many internal studios & dev $$,the shareholders meeting indicating a dominate share of funding Gaas games takes them away from one of Playstation's strengths.

Again,Jim Ryan is a business driven CEO for better for worse....his focus is keeping Sony as profitable as possible...but whereas say the PS Premium/Classics program gets basic psp/ps1 ports & no efforts to add/fix a ps2 library or PS3 remakes,they are happy to chase the mobile market & live services!🤔

If I’m being honest, I don’t care. I was never interested in a multiplayer only last of us game. To me, last of us is story driven and I don’t want to connect to the internet in a post-apocalyptic game where internet is suppose to be non-existent.
Sort of ironic…
(I have no interest in ANY live service multiplayer game)

The first multiplayer was popular and it was good, and now we might not see a second one thanks to Bungie's meddling..
It was supposed to be an add-on to single player game not a whole standalone multiplayer experience
Anyway, hope their GaaS games fail miserably because it seems like they went heavy on this model neglecting what made ps4 a huge success.

This is not good news. Leave Naughty Dog the sh*t alone and let them work their magic. Bungie has no business telling them what to do. Sony is digging their own grave.

@B_Lindz could not agree more

@Sequel yep. Watch Neil druckman leave ND in a short while.

@practicein2021 Destiny gave birth to the live service looter shooter and stuff like raids, events and on going content. Yes MMO's were doing that long before Destiny but Destiny bought it to the masses and made it popular.

The whole premise behind Sony bringing Bungie in makes my skin crawl.

@practicein2021 Do you really think they do, enough of them to warrant investing millions of $$ into it ? And I don't mean for the first 2-3 months after release, but after that, in the long run.
It'd be nothing compared to the support for a full Part 3 release, with SP+MP combined...

Bungie should leave factions alone in my opinion. I have no faith in them, money grabbers producing the most boring game in history, the PvP riddled with loop holes for cheats made it too frustrating to play. Hours of grind to get the best gear then oh suddenly its all change and your gear is now a pile of pap, start grinding again you pathetic peons.

@somnambulance @B_Lindz With everything going on, I get the feeling that more power is actually proving to be detrimental to gaming. I keep seeing lots of talk about "how is this even possible on such old hardware" regarding TotK. Nintendo had the right idea to exit the "most powerful console" battle after the Gamecube.

@somnambulance Agreed about Switch having the strongest lineup though the situation seems more complicated for PS/Xbox to go that route nowadays. Seems very much that something caused Sony and Microsoft to be heavily reliant on 3rd party live service microtransactions in the PS4/XB1 era (Jim Ryan has already said it funds their single player epics).

The rest is what we see, Microsoft acquiring loads of publishers because they're allowed to do whatever they want and Sony heavily go down the live service route themselves to make up for the losses caused by Microsoft.

It makes me worry about what next gen Nintendo may look like, Nintendo very quickly accepting the 10 year CoD deal from Microsoft feels ominous.

I think Bungie should should only be a guidance to help make a game a success. If something doesn’t tick their box then work on it until it does. Even Bungie aren’t perfect. Their own game isn’t very friendly for new players or returning ones so they need some help too. They have a habit of disappointing fans too and not learning a thing from it so instead they repeat the same mistakes

@somnambulance I only believe it regarding the money Sony earns from 3rd party microtransactions. If Sony gets huge 1st party live service hits, I sadly think most of the extra money will go towards more live service stuff because that's what investors would want.

Let’s not forget Uncharteds 2 & 3 also had multiplayer modes and they were GREAT. Those, plus the original Factions are more than enough proof that ND don’t need another dev looking over their shoulder, telling them to add more ‘engagement’ (and probably fomo) and in the process likely ruining what this Factions 2 was going to be.

@KaijuKaiser great analogy! I always hate when people say things like “Focus on the one thing you’re known for, don’t do anything else…” It’s like when an athlete has a bad game then next day they post a picture of themselves at the beach and people lose their minds because they need to be focused of their job. As if we regular folk don’t have bad days at work and get home and focus on something else. Branch out for sure!

@HamKnight I don’t play online competitive multiplayers and I played the hell out of those 3 multiplayers. All 3 were great. I can’t wait for factions!