Following rumours circulating yesterday, The Last of Us Part II creative director Neil Druckmann has announced via the PlayStation Blog that The Last of Us Part II has been delayed until May 29th, 2020.
In the blog post Druckmann writes;
I know. It was just about a month ago when we had our big blowout for the game, letting media play over two hours of it along with debuting our new story trailer and revealing the release date. The positive response we saw from our community was overwhelming. You can feel the energy among the team members. After working on something for so many years, it’s invigorating to get a glimpse of validation for all the hard work.
However, it was during the last few weeks, as we were closing out sections of the game, that we realised we simply didn’t have enough time to bring the entire game up to a level of polish we would call Naughty Dog quality. At this point we were faced with two options: compromise parts of the game or get more time. We went with the latter, and this new release date allows us to finish everything to our level of satisfaction while also reducing stress on the team.
While this is undoubtedly disappointing coming off of Naughty Dog and Sony’s announcement of the February 21st, 2020 date not even one month ago, as Druckmann states, delays like this are necessary to ensure high quality, and Naughty Dog are no doubt under pressure to deliver an experience worthy of the original title’s success.
The Last of Us Part II will release on May 29th, 2020 exclusively for PlayStation 4.