Among the myriad of big announcements made at this year’s Game Awards showcase, PlayStation-owned studio Naughty Dog confirmed, with a short 30-second trailer, that The Last of Us Part 1 will become available for PC players on March 3, 2023.
Ever since this graphical remake was revealed back in June 2022, it was confirmed to be coming to PC eventually, but no further information about the port had been relayed until now. Pre-orders are available on both Steam and the Epic Games Store. The title’s PC-specific features and specs have yet to be provided, but the official Naughty Dog blog post stated that these pieces of info will be disclosed “closer to release.”
The title released exclusively for the PlayStation 5 back in September of this year, and though it was received quite positively by those who played it, it suffered through severe backlash and controversy from the moment it was revealed to when it finally came out. First, fans questioned the necessity of this remake in the first place given that the original Last of Us had come out only 9 years prior. Furthermore, a remastered PlayStation 4 version with upscaled graphics had been made available one year afterward in 2014.
Some fans speculated that The Last of Us Part 1 would perhaps come with the additional gameplay features and mechanics that had been added in 2020’s The Last of Us Part 2, but once a leak revealed that that would not be the case, many began to criticize the title’s premium $70 price point, since it would only be a presentation upgrade for a game that didn’t look half-bad in the first place.
The remake, however, was deemed much more sensible on PC, as The Last of Us has never been present on the platform, so a presentation upgrade to take advantage of the best hardware possible, as well as a $70 price point, felt more appropriate. The Last of Us is one of the most widely acclaimed games of the modern era, and it’s considered by many to be one of the best examples of video game storytelling.
It’s undoubtedly a very valuable PlayStation exclusive, so it’s a big deal that it’s becoming available on another platform for the first time. This proves, if there was still any doubt, just how committed PlayStation is to its new strategy of placing its exclusives on PC post-launch to extract extra value from them. The Game Awards also confirmed that PlayStation-exclusive Returnal would be making its way to PC as well.
