What an interesting time to be alive.
The Last of Us 2 has been delayed once again, this time it’s for an indefinite period of time. That just means they don’t know when they want to put it out. It’s an interesting strategy, that’s for sure.
To me, it does seem like more people are playing video games, Steam players just hit their all time high, network speeds have been decreased on PSN and XBox. People are stranded inside and are trying to social distance as best they can. A lot of people might also be getting laid off, whether that’s because it’s more prudent to get unemployment benefits when your job can’t take care of you through all this downtime, I’m not sure. It might just because a lot of businesses are shutting their doors for good. Either way, for now it seem like consumers are playing a lot of video games. Are they also buying new ones? I guess the sales data on Animal Crossing and Doom Eternal will be a good barometer on that. Actually, Final Fantasy 7 Remake will be even more interesting.
My assumption would be that Sony is worried about physical copies of their games not making it to market in time for the release. This would then cause those gamers that only play with physical copies to get pissed that this massive game they’ve been waiting for might potentially get spoiled by others. It’s an interesting premise that Square Enix feels differently about with the release of Final Fantasy 7 Remake coming out in just a week. They just said “fuck it”, others might not get physical copies right away but they they’ll try their best. You could also just download it too.
Perhaps The Last of Us 2 is just too big of a game for Sony, that having a divided audience, or even forcing others to just download it when perhaps it’s not their preferred method of game delivery is too much.
What’s really interesting about this is that Sony is now encroaching on the PS5 timeframe with this delay. That is if they are still planning on releasing their console this year which is another interesting topic of discussion. Should they? If the PS5 is released on time I would love to see the game released on launch day so that I could just play it on my PS5. Hopefully they implement dynamic resolution scale and an unlocked framerate so it could just hit 4k 60fps out of the gate.
This feels like a bold choice to me. I wonder how Ghosts of Tsushima is going to fair with its release window now. Naughty Dog is reported as working from home currently, their support studios around the world must also be affected by this virus. Makes it all interesting as to whether the game really is near complete or if they’re struggling to take it to greatness. Time will tell, as always. Time and how long we all have to quarantine, seems like we keep fooling ourselves on the time-frame involved with that one too.
Ghost Ba Bomb 