Report: Last of Us creator's new game, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, due out mid-2027

New reports say that Naughty Dog's next game, the space-faring Intergalactic The Heretic Prophet, is due out sometime in mid-2027 if development goes well.

Report: Last of Us creator's new game, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, due out mid-2027
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TL;DR: Naughty Dog's new IP, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, is a mid-2027 PS5 release featuring challenging Dark Souls-style gameplay and God of War combat. The studio faces intense crunch to complete a playable demo amid missed deadlines, while Sony enforces stricter quality control after recent first-party failures.

Naughty Dog's next big-budget PlayStation game is planned for a mid-2027 release on PS5, sources tell Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, with the team now working longer hours to finish a playable demo of the project.

Report: Last of Us creator's new game, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, due out mid-2027 8
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After making multiple Last of Us games back-to-back, Sony's premier first-party art house Naughty Dog is back with a fresh new game. It's called Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, and it's set in a new IP set thousands of years into the future, with leaks suggesting Dark Souls-level challenges with God of War combat.

Earlier reports said that Intergalactic wouldn't launch in 2026, and now the latest from Bloomberg says that Naughty Dog wants to have the game out by the middle of 2027. Sources also paint a hectic picture of work life at Naughty Dog's Intergalactic team, with the studio reportedly pushing overtime onto employees and an increase to 5-day office work weeks.

The Intergalactic team is currently working on a playable demo at the studio, and they are being pressured to make something that can wow Sony executives in the game's upcoming evaluation--a critical move, considering the game has apparently missed some of its internal deadlines.

Naughty Dog has had a long history with crunch; in 2020, one animator was allegedly hospitalized because they were so fatigued from overwork.

Sony's more recent leadership change, which saw Hideaki Nishino taking the helm of Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO in April, may facilitate stronger reviews over first-party software. Sony has been enacting more strict quality control over its internal games, especially after the disastrous failure of Concord, which led to a significant write-down, the project being completely delisted from the market, and the closure of a studio.