Naughty Dog might be getting ready to announce its next game, as suggested by some of the company's recent activity. This development arrives just as the Sony-owned studio released the PC version of The Last of Us Part 1.
Naughty Dog's next game is widely expected to be a multiplayer-focused experience set in the world of The Last of Us. The project initially started as a multiplayer component of The Last of Us Part 2 that was separated from the hit 2020 game come 2019. Precious little has been revealed about the title ever since, with Naughty Dog only sporadically reiterating that its development is still ongoing.
That radio silence might finally be coming to an end, as suggested by some of the company's recent activity in the job market. Namely, Naughty Dog is currently advertising multiple temporary positions that all appear to be geared toward supporting a new game announcement. The list of currently available assignments encompasses the roles of a trailer editor, gameplay capture artist, visual effects technical director, and a dialogue coordinator. Naughty Dog hence seems to be in the process of assembling a temporary stateside team that could manage most multimedia aspects of a new game announcement.
The newly emerged job listings dovetail with recent rumblings that The Last of Us multiplayer game could be coming sooner than later. Even if work on the project started well after The Last of Us Part 2 began active development, the title has still been in the pipeline for over half a decade at this point, just based on the fact that The Last of Us 2 co-directors Anthony Newman and Kurt Margenau confirmed its existence back at E3 2018.
The strongest indicator of a near-future announcement from Naughty Dog recently arrived from the studio's co-president and The Last of Us creator Neil Druckmann, who revealed that The Last of Us multiplayer spinoff has "much more" left to share during a mid-March interview. Elaborating on those comments, the veteran game developer predicted the game will be the subject of much discussion later on this year, thus strongly signaling that its announcement is planned for sometime in 2023.
Apart from fans, another party that's likely eagerly anticipating the game's release is Sony itself. Namely, while the PS5 has been out for nearly two and a half years at this point, the company's latest system has yet to receive an original game from Naughty Dog, one of the Japanese gaming giant's most renowned and consistent studios. The only two PS5 titles that the developer put out to date were Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection and The Last of Us Part 1, so a pair of remasters and a remake, respectively.
