Naughty Dog has announced its commitment to designing future games around PlayStation and PC. The studio has targeted console only in the past, which has made porting its titles to PC a complex process. Hopefully, this will avoid some of the issues like the ones we’ve seen in the recent The Last of Us Part 1 release on Steam.
Naughty Dog will be handling its own PC ports
As explained in the official blog post celebrating the PC release of The Last of Us Part 1, Naughty Dog’s decision to fully support and create PC ports is a significant one. In the post, Vice President Christian Gyrling described the difficulties of adapting input from a DualSense controller to a keyboard and mouse:
“For example, The Last of Us Part I on PlayStation 5 employs “stick-walking,” where players traverse a space using the DualSense controller’s thumb stick. As we all know, walking too fast in The Last of Us might alert the Infected, which, if you’re trying to remain stealthy, you’ll want to avoid. But while using the thumb stick, players’ emotions might sometimes get the best of them, resulting in throttling the speed at which they walk.
This feature is both tactile and emotional, adding to the suspense of any encounter. For the PC version, we had to consider many players’ preference of using a keyboard and mouse as a viable control method. However, they don’t necessarily behave the same way as a controller. So, the Design team explored and adapted this traversal method while still ensuring a world-class player experience with mouse and keyboard. We want PC players to experience the same level of tactile and suspenseful gameplay console players already enjoy.”
Buy The Last of Us Part 1 and Part 2 on Amazon
It’s clear that Sony considers PC to be a valuable secondary platform, and Naughty Dog’s confirmation that it’ll be developing its PC versions at least partially in-house is a bold commitment. Of course, it’s doubtful this means we’ll see day-one PC releases, but it could significantly shorten the time it takes for Sony’s first-party games to make it to Steam.
