Recently we went hands-on with the impressive The Last of Us Part II from Naughty Dog, which also finally got a release date of February 21, 2020. Well, looks like we'll have to wait a little bit longer with the developer confirming that the highly anticipated sequel will now arrive on May 29, 2020.

A delay of three months, which Neil Druckmann - Director of The Last of Us Part II - notes comes down to ensuring the game can be the best it can be.

I know. It was just about a month ago when we had our big blowout for the game, letting media play over two hours of it along with debuting our new story trailer and revealing the release date. The positive response we saw from our community was overwhelming. You can feel the energy among the team members. After working on something for so many years, it’s invigorating to get a glimpse of validation for all the hard work.

However, it was during the last few weeks, as we were closing out sections of the game, that we realized we simply didn’t have enough time to bring the entire game up to a level of polish we would call Naughty Dog quality. At this point we were faced with two options: compromise parts of the game or get more time. We went with the latter, and this new release date allows us to finish everything to our level of satisfaction while also reducing stress on the team.

While we’re relieved that we won’t have to compromise our vision, we’re disappointed that we weren’t able to avoid this exact situation. We wish we could’ve foreseen the amount of polish we needed, but the size and scope of this game got the better of us. We hate disappointing our fans and for that we’re sorry.

In the end this, alongside recent delays to titles like DOOM Eternal, points to a new trend where publishers and developers are actively moving away from releasing games too early to meet specific dates. With the recent revelation that Cyberpunk 2077 is still very much in-development in terms of adding new content into the game, we wouldn't be surprised to see that get a slight delay too.