Last of Us season 2 beats season 1 viewership by 10%, Sony well-prepared to capitalize on buzz

The latest season of The Last of Us TV series debuts with an exceptional start, and this time around Sony has a product ready to sell to viewers.

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The Last of Us season 2 premiered last night to over 5 million people, beating out season 1's original launch viewership.

"The season 2 premiere of The Last Of Us delivered approximately 5.3M U.S. cross-platform viewers, outpacing the season 1 premiere by more than 10%. Season 1 went on to amass an audience of nearly 32M per episode, the largest viewership of an HBO and HBO Max debut season ever," WB Discovery wrote on Twitter.

Season 2, which diverts in many ways from Naughty Dog's The Last of Us Part II game, marks another milestone in Sony's ambitious company-wide plan for entertainment.

The idea is to marry the labors of its various divisions (in this case, PlayStation, Sony Pictures, and Sony Music) into a series of products that serve as gateways to more products, content, and services.

In short, Sony made The Last of Us TV show in a bid to make money through potential advertising deals, to generate massive awareness for its key IPs, and then to capitalize on the buzz with games. It happened before by chance.

Last year, ex-Sony Interactive Entertainment President Jim Ryan had confirmed that Last of Us game sales "increased dramatically" as new episodes of the HBO show were released.

"The principle reason of IP exploitation is really to increase the reach and growth of this IP and expose it to more people. We had a great case study with The Last of Us series," Ryan said at a 2023 strategy meeting.

"Every time an episode of that show dropped, sales of the game increased very dramatically. It was really a remarkable spike. Each week an episode dropped, we sold a lot more games. So I see this whole thing as symbiotic."

This time around for the show's season 2 premiere, Sony is ready with yet another Last of Us re-release, but this one might be different.

It's called The Last of Us Complete and it packs in PS5-enhanced versions of both games. The "complete" part could mean that The Last of Us 3 might be on ice for now.