A new report by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier claims that a PlayStation 5 remake of 2013’s The Last of Us is in development at Naughty Dog.
Codenamed T1X, the game was originally being developed by a team within Sony called The Visual Arts Service Group, which was founded in 2007 by Michael Mumbauer. According to the publication, TVAS is the “unsung hero” behind a number of hit PlayStation titles. At one point, it wanted to have more creative control over its projects, and opted to remake The Last of Us. However, Sony neither acknowledged the team’s existence nor granted it the funding required to complete the project. Instead, T1X was handed over to Naughty Dog.
TVAS has since largely disbanded, and a number of people including Mumbauer have left Sony. None of the aforementioned parties agreed to comment on Schreier’s report.
Bloomberg further reported that TVAS actually completed a portion of T1X by spring 2019 to showcase what the final product would look like. However, new head of PlayStation’s Worldwide Studios Hermen Hulst wasn’t impressed with the project because it was too expensive. TVAS was later tasked with helping Naughty Dog with The Last of Us Part II, which had suffered a delay at the time. Eventually, Sony asked Naughty Dog developers to join the T1X development team, leaving little autonomy for the original TVAS members, most of whom have now left Sony.
Schreier’s report claims that T1X is still in development, but no one really knows what became of TVAS, which is jokingly called Naughty Dog South.
[Source: Bloomberg]
