A remake of Last of Us, the most-awarded video game of all time, is reportedly being developed by Sony’s Naughty Dog.
The 2013 game’s remake is destined for the new PS5, the idea belonging to an unnamed team that Sony had been keeping secret until the team recently dissolved, which has stirred controversy within the Sony empire.
The team was lead by Michael Mumbauer, former Studio Head / Senior Director of Visual Arts Service Group at PlayStation World Wide Studios, which is a unit that helps finish off games designed at other Sony-owned studios.
Mumbauer had the vision to create a team that would no longer act as a support group but create and develop its own games.
He recruited 30 people from the Visual Arts Service Group and other game studios, aiming to be recognised as a new development unit within Sony.
Sony, however, never acknowledged the team officially and kept it a secret. Furthermore, it never had a name, and the Last of Us remake was code-named T1X.
The project required a bigger team that would help rework the graphics and redesign gameplay mechanics as they were working with PS5’s new technology. Mumbauer, however, didn’t receive the green light for a bigger budget, even though his small team had been working tirelessly on a section of the game that showed the direction it was going.
The person that rejected his proposal was the new Head of PlayStation’s Worldwide Studios at the time, Hermen Hulst.
Just as the team was expecting to start working on the production of the remake, Naughty Dog’s Last of Us II which was dubbed a bigger game, was facing difficulties. Therefore, the launch was pushed back from 2019 and 2020, and many developers from Mumbauer’s team were assigned to assist Naughty Dog.
Unsurprisingly, this slowed down their work on their remake of Last of Us.
However, the last drop was when dozens of developers from Naughty Dog were assigned to Mumbauer’s small, independent team. Shortly after, the project was moved under Naughty Dog’s budget, and the autonomy of the original team was lost.
Given the circumstances and having to face the sad reality that their dream to create a new unit within Sony had been destroyed systematically, Mumbauer and most of his team left the company in December last year. Amongst the people that resigned was David Hall, the game’s director.
At the moment, the remake of Last of Us is still under development at Naughty Dog’s studio, and it is unclear what is going to happen with it or when it will launch.
In other PS5 news, Sony recently filed a patent for a new controller system.