PlayStation wants Neil Druckmann greater than HBO does

I actually wished to like season two of HBO’s The Final of Us. For the most part, I did — but it surely was additionally not possible to disregard the web plenty saying that showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann had misplaced the thread in season two. A few of that comes from artistic selections the pair made in adapting the primary half of the PlayStation recreation The Final of Us Half II to TV; it’s a narrative with a sprawling plot that asks a lot of the player and, because it seems, much more of a passive viewers. The season two cliffhanger ending and tease of what’s to come back in season three simply didn’t land for lots of people, and (spoiler alert) there are plenty of questions from viewers as as to if the present can survive the loss of Pedro Pascal’s Joel. It seems like followers of the video games are mad on the adjustments the TV present has made, whereas individuals who haven’t performed the sport aren’t vibing with the story as offered in season two.

As such, I haven’t put up a full-throated protection of season two when, say, a colleague tells me it’s a bummer that the present is now “mid.” Although there are many poisonous “followers” who trash the solid and appear to hate the present telling tales with homosexual characters, I can admit there are additionally respectable points with season two. However regardless of that admission making its means into my Final of Us-loving coronary heart, I used to be nonetheless shocked on the information that Druckmann, co-creator of each the sport and the present, was leaving the project for season three. Shortly after Druckmann’s announcement, Co-writer on The Final of Us Half II and season two of the present Halley Gross additionally mentioned she was leaving, which implies that the 2 most distinguished individuals who labored on the video games are actually gone.

How this can have an effect on season three clearly might be the huge query over the work main as much as season three, which is able to most likely arrive someday in early 2027. The simultaneous departure of each Druckmann and Gross reeks of HBO deciding that the tepid reception to season two meant a change was wanted. In an announcement that lacked the entire ardour Druckmann has proven for the present to this point, he mentioned he was transitioning his “full focus” to Naughty Canine and future video games, including Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.

We’ll most likely by no means know if Druckmann left on his personal or was pressured out, however the a part of me that loves Naughty Canine’s video games is discovering solace in that new focus whilst HBO’s The Final of Us is thrown into turmoil. Druckmann will most likely be way more helpful to Sony as an entire engaged on new video games than dabbling within the TV business.

That’s largely as a result of yesterday additionally reminded us simply how chaotic the sport business is. Within the greatest information of the day, a series of wide-ranging layoffs at Microsoft impacted numerous Xbox studios, the newest dangerous information for an business that has frankly been devastated by instability in recent years.

With that background in thoughts, Druckmann’s renewed give attention to Naughty Canine makes plenty of sense. The TV business will not be hurting within the least for status content material. Showrunner Craig Mazin already has the plot factors he must cowl in season three of The Final of Us, so Druckmann’s enter will most likely be missed lower than it could have been when the challenge acquired began again in 2021. However PlayStation, alternatively, wants a lift, and having a artistic chief like Druckmann serving to to make Intergalactic and no matter else Naughty Canine has up its sleeve is one thing the corporate may actually use.

It’s no secret that the first-party PlayStation studios proceed to make distinctive video games — however the tempo throughout the PS5 technology has slowed considerably. For the primary few years of the PS5’s life, most huge exclusives like God of Battle Ragnarök and Horizon Forbidden West got here to each the PS4 and PS5. That slowly modified, with titles like Astro Bot and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 being constructed completely for the PS5. However the cadence of those releases has slowed considerably; this 12 months’s releases embody Loss of life Stranding 2: On the Seashore (possible a timed unique) and Ghost of Yotei however 5 years into this technology it is undoubtedly been a sluggish burn.

That development is especially acute for Naughty Canine. After releasing Uncharted 4: A Thief’s Finish in 2016 and following that rapidly with the standalone growth Uncharted: The Misplaced Legacy in 2017, Naughty Canine has launched one (1) authentic recreation since: The Final of Us Half II. Aside from that, we’ve gotten… remakes and remasters of each franchises, maybe not coincidentally to draw in people who discovered The Final of Us by way of the HBO present.

Between his duties as Naughty Canine’s studio head and his TV work, it’s honest to surprise how a lot time Druckmann has spent on precise video games in recent times. It is also fully doable he is unfold too skinny now, even with out co-running the TV present — it is most likely previous time for some new artistic visionaries to take the lead at Naughty Canine given Druckmann’s position as chief government.

If he’s actually the primary director and author for Intergalactic as he mentioned in his assertion, it’s excellent news for the PlayStation model that he’s again on that gig full-time. It’s only a bit over six months since Intergalactic was first introduced, so now we have no actual concept the place the sport is in its growth cycle. But it surely feels like the sport has been in growth since 2020, and Naughty Canine has mentioned it realized a lesson from asserting The Final of Us Half II so lengthy earlier than it truly launched. Hopefully we’re a 2026 or 2027 launch slightly than a lot past that.

In the meantime, Druckmann’s departure from HBO’s The Final of Us could be a little bit of a canary within the coal mine for Sony’s broader PlayStation ambitions and a refocus on simply making video games. Video games business professional Joost Van Dreunen wrote in 2023 that the success of the present’s first season was “the fruits of Sony’s gradual transition to turning into a media firm.” That’s one thing the corporate itself has talked up within the years since — the concept of turning into platform-less, with franchises present on the PlayStation, on the film display screen and on the smaller TV display screen in your house. Take its CES 2025 presentation, for instance; Sony talked up multiple gaming adaptations moreover The Final of Us just like the Horizon franchise and Ghost of Tsushima.

“Whereas [Sony] continues to promote {hardware} at scale, its strategic emphasis is shifting towards high-margin digital providers and franchise growth,” Van Dreunen wrote last month. “Titles like The Final of Us have crossed into tv with important success, and Sony has invested closely in anime distribution (by way of Crunchyroll) and movie diversifications of its recreation IP. It positions PlayStation much less as a closed {hardware} ecosystem and extra as the muse for a vertically built-in content material engine. Reasonably than chasing distribution breadth like Microsoft, Sony is doubling down on cultural depth, utilizing its unique IP to construct multi-format engagement loops.”

I don’t assume a less-than-stellar second season of The Final of Us will trigger Sony to desert this technique. (Sony can be too huge of a ship to utterly flip away from this plan in a short time.) However the repositioning of Druckmann because the lead of a profitable and influential online game studio slightly than a multi-medium artistic visionary reinforces the truth that in the event that they’re going to have hits on a wide range of completely different platforms, new, formidable and hopefully good video games like Intergalactic are a necessity. At this level, HBO’s The Final of Us goes to maintain on rolling, with or with out Druckmann — there have been plenty of loud complaints, but additionally nonetheless loads of viewers and optimistic critiques. However Naughty Canine is late for an additional huge recreation that pushes the style in a brand new path. It’s the appropriate time for Druckmann to come back house.