The Last of Us Part I’s PC port receives massive backlash

Despite the PlayStation 5 version of the game being well received by fans and critics, it appears that Iron Galaxy’s PC port has caused fans to drop the game’s Steam rating to "mostly negative."

The details:

• The Last of Us Part I’s (TLOU) PC port was released on Steam on March 28 to capitalize on the end of HBO's TV adaptation; however, the port is said to have numerous issues, rendering it "unplayable" to some. According to a top Steam review, compiling the game's shaders took around 45 minutes after downloading, which should improve performance in-game, but the majority of the player's time was spent dealing with stutters and crashes, prompting the player to request a refund. Nearly 9,000 fans have reviewed the game on Steam in the two days since its release, with only 36% of those reviews being positive.
• Naughty Dog has responded to the reports on its Twitter page since the game's release, stating that it was "actively investigating multiple issues" reported by players and would keep fans updated on future solutions. It also stated that if fans encounter any additional issues during gameplay that aren't already listed on the known issues page, they should submit a support ticket on the company's website. We can anticipate a patch addressing the game-breaking issues in the near future.
• Unoptimized PC ports of console exclusives have always been a mixed bag, with Naughty Dog's Uncharted: The Legacy of Thieves Collection experiencing similar issues before being fixed in a patch last year. Fans are now wondering why Sony chose Iron Galaxy to handle the port of TLOU after the poor reception of the Uncharted release rather than dealing with development in-house, especially since the tech giant owns subsidiary Nixxes Software, which has previously ported PlayStation games to home computers. Fortunately, Marvel's Spider-Man and God of War in 2022 did not follow the trend of poor PC ports after Nixxes and Jetpack Interactive ported the games, respectively.

More Sony news:

• Insomniac Games' Marvel's Spider-Man 2 will be released in September. Inadvertently leaking the date while responding to a fan on Twitter, Venom voice actor Tony Todd also stated that "massive publicity" would be arriving in August, implying that Insomniac is opting to go all-in on marketing in a short period rather than a longer pre-release strategy.
• The PlayStation 5 was the best-selling console in Japan in February, outselling the Nintendo Switch for the first time since its release. After selling only 65,772 hardware units in February 2022, its February sales increased by 457% year on year, for a total of 366,982 hardware unit sales.
• Sony is reportedly working on the PlayStation 5 Pro, which is scheduled to be released in 2024. The console's hardware improvements are unknown, but Mark Cerny, a PS5 architect, has filed a patent for systems that allow for "accelerated ray tracing," which could be introduced with the Pro.