For decades, Naughty Dog was the king of triple-A, pushing Playstation hardware to its absolute technical limits, from detailed environments and expressive characters on the PS1 with Crash Bandicoot, to cinematic masterpieces on PS3 and PS4 like Uncharted and The Last of Us. But at this year’s summer showcases, Sony’s most legendary first-party studio was completely missing in action – leaving fans wondering exactly how far away its next title, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, might be. So, in an era where the current-gen consoles have been spinning their wheels, why has Naughty Dog been benched?
From Sony’s multi-billion-dollar obsession with chasing the live-service trend to a mass exodus of its top team, Naughty Dog has seemingly been caught in a perfect storm of publisher hubris and a big chunk of its talent simply leaving for pastures new. Can Naughty Dog recover from this, and are they set for a major return to form on PlayStation 6?
Jim Trinca is a Video Producer at IGN, and when he isn’t fawning over Assassin’s Creed, he can be found watching Star Trek and eating stuff. Follow him on @jimtrinca.bsky.social , and check out The Trinca Perspective playlist over on IGN’s YouTube channel!
Said it before I’ll say it again, Naughty Dog was overrated even when they were good, devs like The Coalition and Playground will be eating their lunch going forward.
Let’s just not do this please. Naughty Dog are literally the reason the Playstation first party organization is this highly recognized and commercially successful brand.
They have a pretty clean track record, unless Intergalactic is subpar then I’m not gonna act otherwise. The time of development is certainly too long but this is a industry issue as well.
Yet Intergalactic is not what people wanted from this studio. It’s not really getting people excited right now.
But it’s not just Sony, every big studio is under pressure because of their pedigree and ballooning budgets and it’s especially true for PlayStation studios.
I think there was more going on behind the cancellation of TLOU2 Online than we know about. I just don’t really believe that Naughty Dog “didn’t know” that GAAS require major ongoing support until Bungie swooped in and hipped them to that fact, or however the story is supposed to go. And then armed with this new knowledge that they never before suspected, they decided to just cancel the game outright instead of scope it down to a typical multiplayer deathmatch mode – which was all anyone wanted from them in the first place.
Whatever happened behind the scenes, it kills me that Naughty Dog has basically sat out a whole generation. I love their games and one of the big reasons I even bought a PS5 was anticipating Uncharted 5 and/or The Last of Us 3.
Literally only speaking for myself here but Intergalactic is what I want and I’m super excited for it. I also wanted Uncharted 5 though, and I definitely did not want a 7+ year drought between ND games.
To me, ND peaked at Uncharted 2. I finished that game in 1 sitting, and the next day I started it all over again on crushing. I don’t even remember if I ever did what with another game.
Bungie is largely successful for Xbox brand yet it’s A OK to call them overrated so why not ND? Overrated doesn’t mean they suck. They’re good at what they do. Thing is what they do isn’t as special as it used to be ( no matter what gaming media pundits will tell everyone) and even then they weren’t the best at it IMO. That was Rockstar.
They didn’t innovate anything gameplay wise in any genre( like Capcom for example with SF2 with fighting games and basically pioneering the "character action sub genre with DMC) they made technically impressive games and prioritised story and grand set pieces basically the Sony template.
A lot of studios are doing that nowadays ( aforementioned Coalition and Playground even Ninja Theory, fucking Microsoft) not to mention studios coming out of China. Intergalactic will have to be real special to stand out these days. This ain’t the 7th gen anymore.
Loved UC 2 played the MP a lot too. It was no Gears but I enjoyed the verticality of it. Mechanically TLOU 2 is their best work IMO. Story wise a shitheap and the overall message they were attempting to convey was 100% at odds with it’s gameplay (funny how Rise of The Tomb Raider constantly gets called out for “ludonarrative dissonance” but not TLOU 2) but it was fun to play.
Rockstar come close to the level of animation and visuals (as of RDR2 ofc, GTA 6 looks another level) and surpass in some areas but of course what they do is even more impressive because it’s 100x the size, scale and dynamism. But Naughty Dog games still have the best cinematics in the industry by far, especially anything in real-time play, they are unmatched with how everything blends together and moves just right with the camera and everything. Hellblade 2 does better character models and animations, and is as good in cinematics, but blending it all together especially while playing with multiple gameplay varieties and all the little details, it’s so vastly superior in something like TLoU2 over anything else I’ve played.
I also wanted Uncharted 5 though, and I definitely did not want a 7+ year drought between ND games.