Sony's latest PlayStation State of Play event delivered fresh gameplay for Marvel's Wolverine and announced God of War Laufey, but the broadcast became most memorable for what it didn't show. Naughty Dog's highly anticipated Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet received zero updates, intensifying concern that the studio's next major release remains years away.
Naughty Dog hasn't shipped a brand new game since The Last of Us Part 2 in June 2020. The studio abandoned plans for a Last of Us multiplayer title and pivoted entirely to Intergalactic, a sci-fi action adventure centered on a bounty hunter wielding a plasma sword. The game entered early development in 2020 and was formally revealed at The Game Awards in December 2024. Creative director Neil Druckmann has called it the studio's most expansive, ambitious, and likely most expensive project ever.
Yet no gameplay, release window, or development status appeared during the showcase, leaving the PlayStation faithful wondering when they'll finally get their hands on it.
Naughty Dog wasn't alone in missing the event. Haven Studios, acquired by Sony in 2022, still hasn't released a single game despite being founded in 2021. Fairgame$, its debut title, drew no mention. Bend Studio's portfolio peaked with Days Gone in 2019. Media Molecule's most recent release was Dreams in 2020. Polyphony Digital shipped Gran Turismo 7 in 2022 with no successor announced. Even Guerrilla's Horizon Hunters Gathering, a co-op spinoff currently in beta testing, stayed off the presentation.
The pattern reflects a broader decline in PlayStation's first-party output. Recently analyzed sales data shows the company's homegrown game revenues have contracted over the past five years, a trajectory broken only by last year's Ghost of Yotei. Multiple culprits share blame: failed live-service experiments, canceled projects, and a simple reduction in the number of games Sony actually finishes and ships.
State of Play did land substantial announcements. Insomniac Games showed extended footage of an unapologetically violent take on Marvel's Wolverine. Santa Monica Studio revealed God of War Laufey, the next chapter in its Norse saga. Firesprite's Until Dawn 2 finally emerged from the rumor mill as confirmed. These reveals offered something for players to anticipate, but couldn't mask the absence of Naughty Dog's sci-fi commitment, which carries the weight of the studio's reputation and production scale.
For PlayStation fans already restless about the pace of first-party releases, the State of Play felt like confirmation of a frustrating reality: the biggest, flashiest projects sometimes take forever to materialize, if they materialize at all.
Author Emily Chen: "When your most ambitious game gets invisibly shelved from a major showcase, that's not a sign of imminent arrival."
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