The Last of Us (12)

The Last of Us was a huge money maker for Sony, and it secured Naughty Dog’s legacy as the premiere developer for the PlayStation 3 console. Naturally, the two would want to get this game into the hands of PlayStation 4 gamers with a cheap and easy port as soon as possible, right?

Well, not exactly.

When confronted with the question in the comments at PlayStation Blog, Naughty Dog’s Community Strategist Eric Monacelli gave a very blunt, “We have no plans to do that.”

Speculation is running wild as to the future of cross generation ports, similar to the HD collection phenomenon seen this past generation. Smaller games like Flower and Sound Shapes have already been confirmed for a PlayStation 4 release, but nothing has been stated about bigger games.

Why bother, though? The graphical capabilities between the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 don’t even come close to the enormous jump we saw when switching from the PlayStation 2 to the PlayStation 3. The HD and boost in power required some of those game to remain playable by today’s standards, unless you enjoy Shadow of the Colossus looking like a slideshow.

Beyond the convenience of having one less console in your house, I’m not seeing the need to upgrade this early in the console cycle. Wait a few years at least.

Unless of course you just don’t own a PlayStation 3, and in that case, that’s just the way how console exclusives work. You don’t buy a console the game you want is on, you don’t get the game. Easy as that.