There are many horror examples of games being announced too early over the years. Some recent examples are Starfield, which will be released later this year, which was announced just under five years ago. Metroid Prime 4, in turn, was announced almost six years ago – without us even seeing so much as a picture from the game.
In a recent interview, Neil Druckman, head of Naughty Dog, said that the studio does not want to fall into the same trap as with Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and The Last of Us 2 again. These were announced two and four years early, respectively, and although there was time to create rumors and hype – Druckman believes that in the long run it hurt the games and the studio. Thus he said:
You’re right, we did announce Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us Part 2 way in advance, but that actually caused a little bit of the work-life balance issues that we’ve sometimes had at the studio. By delaying that announcement a bit, we could play with the schedule more and we’re more conscious now about how we’re approaching production. So there’s ours [The Last of Us] multiplayer project and there’s another project that I will not say anything about that’s beyond that that we’re also very much excited for.”
It thus seems to be primarily a decision made to avoid crunch and too tight schedules, something we at Gamereactor naturally support.
Thanks NaughtyDogCentral.
