Sony delays game ‘indefinitely’. WTF??

Am I the only one who feels confused and to use a very English term, ‘a bit miffed’ that The Last of Us Part II has been delayed once again?

Yes I know, the world is being ravaged by a pandemic, it’s going to have a knock on effect to all apsects of life, games included.

But I want to play devil’s advocate here. It’s 2020, and I don’t know about you, but more and more of the games I play, I play digitally. As in, I don’t buy a physical copy. The only exception is if there’s a cheap deal on a retail copy or if it’s a Nintendo Switch game so will probably retain a lot of value.

But this is why, I’m guessing, they’ve delayed the game, right? Due to the fact that it’s pretty hard to manufacture anything en masse while we’re all in lockdown. (Unless you’re Apple, who seem to have not noticed the crisis and are about to release a new iPhone SE – they operate on a different plain of reality it would often seem.)

But I still can’t help but feel a little cheated

The shops won’t have game discs to sell, so it’s unfair to release the game as they feel they couldn’t do a launch without major compromises to supply and distribution. But the shops are closed anyway and, crazy idea here, but why don’t Sony just do a digital release of the game for now?

Sure, the likes of GAME and CEX would be upset but does that really matter? Naughty Dog have said the game will be polished and ready by the original late May release date, so why don’t they just shove it on the PlayStation store worldwide at the same time for us all to download and enjoy, should we wish to splash the cash.

But maybe that’s it. Thinking out loud here, Sony must surely have been banking on The Last of Us Part II being, like its predecessor, the biggest first party release of the end of the console generation. If they did push ahead with a digital only version, how much would that hurt the bottom line? At a time when companies are struggling to make money and with the substaintial development cost of a new console in the PlayStation 5 looming large on the balance sheets, it’s not a bad theory…

Or maybe there’s a techincal hurdle here too – unleashing such an anticipated title purely on PSN in a globally co-ordinated release might just break the network. I suppose it’s perfectly possible that it would, given the slowdowns that have already taken place to deal with record demand.

I have many questions as you can see, but very few answers. For me, The Last Of Us was the best game released on the PlayStation 3 – and my personal favourite game of that entire console generation. So maybe I’m being a shittier about this than I should be. It’s a big disappointment, for all of us gamers.

But I still can’t help but feel a bit cheated. Yes we are in the midst of a crisis and yes, we are all having to make sacrifices and accept disappointments. But like I said at the beginning, it’s 2020, games get released digitally all the time and are continuing to be across all platforms despite the crisis.

So I’m sorry Sony, I may well be wrong (on a technical level) but I feel you’re just not doing the right thing with this.

The only question now is, when does it become ‘appropriate’ to release the damn thing??