The Last of Us Online’s Reported Cost Makes Sony’s Live-Service Gamble Look Even Worse

“Hundreds of millions” is a serious estimate, not a final invoice

The phrase sounds precise, but it is not. The reported figure could cover years of employee salaries, contractors, technology, testing, outsourcing, and online infrastructure. It may or may not include marketing, platform costs, severance, or spending after the project stopped being a priority. Without Sony’s accounting, there is no reliable way to separate those categories or calculate the final loss.

The estimate also does not prove that every dollar produced nothing. Naughty Dog said the project’s technology investments and lessons would carry into future development, and staff members moved to other work. That does not make the cancellation cheap. It means describing the entire amount as money thrown away would claim more than the public evidence supports.

The number sits beside Sony’s biggest game budgets

Court documents revealed that The Last of Us Part II cost about $220 million to develop, while Horizon Forbidden West cost about $212 million. Those figures came from a report based on documents disclosed during the Microsoft and Activision Blizzard case. They are useful for scale, not a perfect comparison: the two released games had different schedules and production needs, while the reported The Last of Us Online estimate may include costs outside a standard development budget. GameSpot’s budget report is the source for both figures.

The uncomfortable comparison is about recovery. A released single-player game can begin earning back its development cost at launch. A live-service game usually needs a large audience and years of updates to justify the money spent before release. If it is stopped late, the publisher loses the chance to build that audience and has to redirect the team at the same time.

Sony wanted a portfolio, not one expensive bet

Sony’s live-service strategy was meant to spread that risk across several games. In its FY2023 Q2 earnings Q&A, the company said it had reviewed a plan for more than 12 live-service titles by fiscal 2025 and now expected six in that period. Sony said the change was meant to protect quality and development readiness, not abandon the category. The company’s Q&A still describes live service as a mid- and long-term part of PlayStation’s growth plan.

That plan explains why The Last of Us Online carried so much weight. It connected Sony’s push for recurring online revenue to one of PlayStation’s best-known single-player brands. Our coverage of the Last of Us remake debate shows why the series has a strong identity as a story-driven game. Turning that audience into a long-running online community required more than adding multiplayer to a familiar name.

Helldivers 2 shows why Sony will keep trying

Sony has a real success in Helldivers 2, so the lesson is not that every online game is doomed. Sony said Helldivers 2 had welcomed more than 22.9 million players across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC as of August 9, 2026. The game gives Sony the result its strategy is designed to find: a cross-platform audience that keeps returning for new missions, weapons, and updates. Sony’s player update provides the current figure. Our Helldivers 2 Warbond guide covers the type of ongoing content that keeps the game in that cycle.

Helldivers 2 does not make the model easy to repeat. A successful live-service game needs a clear reason to play with other people, a production team that can keep supplying updates, and an audience willing to return after the launch period. The Last of Us Online had a famous setting, but Naughty Dog concluded that the support burden would consume the studio that built it.

The bigger cost was the time around the game

The financial estimate is only part of the story. Schreier said most of Naughty Dog had worked on The Last of Us Online, remasters, or remakes before the cancellation, and that the majority of the studio did not move onto Intergalactic until afterward. Those details do not prove that every delay came from the multiplayer project, but they show how much of the studio’s attention was tied up in work that never reached players. The cancellation report from GameSpot provides additional context around Naughty Dog’s decision.

The decision to cancel was probably the responsible one. The timing is what makes it painful. If Schreier’s reported figure is broadly accurate, Sony learned an expensive lesson only after Naughty Dog had spent years testing whether a single-player studio could carry a permanent online operation.

The Last of Us Online is not proof that Sony should stop making multiplayer games. It is proof that a live-service plan cannot rely on a famous logo and a large budget. The game has to fit the studio, justify years of support, and give players a reason to return that is stronger than the brand name. Sony’s reported bill makes that part of the strategy look much less forgiving.