Highly anticipated sequel The Last of Us Part II is delayed due to the coronavirus, officially named COVID-19, pandemic. Sony announced the change Thursday but didn’t provide any additional details.
Marvel’s Iron Man VR, another PlayStation 4 exclusive, is also delayed.
“[Sony Interactive Entertainment] has made the difficult decision to delay the launch of The Last of Us Part II and Marvel’s Iron Man VR until further notice,” Sony said in a tweet Thursday. “Logistically, the global crisis is preventing us from providing the launch experience our players deserve. Currently, there are no other delays to report, but we’ll keep you updated.”
Update: SIE has made the difficult decision to delay the launch of The Last of Us Part II and Marvel's Iron Man VR until further notice. Logistically, the global crisis is preventing us from providing the launch experience our players deserve.
— PlayStation (@PlayStation) April 2, 2020
It’s the second delay for The Last of Us Part II after Naughty Dog’s follow-up to 2013’s The Last of Us was pushed back in October 2019. The Last of Us sequel was originally planned to release on February 21, 2020.
Director Neil Druckmann said that the initial delay was made so the studio didn’t have to compromise its vision and that the team wishes “we could’ve foreseen the amount of polish we needed, but the size and scope of this game got the better of us.” The PlayStation 3 original received critical acclaim upon release and the sequel has been in development since 2014.
Marvel’s Iron Man VR is set to be Sony’s second exclusive title with Marvel, with the first being Insomniac Games’ well-received Marvel’s Spider-Man. Developer Camouflaj announced in January that it wouldn’t be able to hit its February 28 release date and was being moved to May 15. The studio said that the move was made to “deliver on our vision and meet the high expectations of our amazing community.”
This latest string of game delays is yet another example of how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting the games industry. Conferences and trade shows such as the Game Developers Conference and Electronic Entertainment Expo were postponed or canceled impacting planned game reveals and business deals.
Still, Sony expects the upcoming PlayStation 5 will come out as expected. While there has been little information provided on the new console, the company said it expects “no material impact” for its gaming and network services segment for the current fiscal year. The PS5 is expected to come out for the holiday 2020 season.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.