A new report has revealed the release window for Naughty Dog’s next game, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. Naughty Dog is held as one of the best studios in the gaming industry, which is both good and not-so-good for the studio. It awards them a lot of freedom to make expensive, ambitious games with a lot of time and resources. But as a direct result of that, it means there is a lot of pressure to get it right, which can create its own unique issues. Naughty Dog has been criticized in the past for its use of crunch, a term that encapsulates an intense period of overtime to finish a game, often compromising the personal lives of the developers.
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It is believed that Naughty Dog is able to achieve some of its high quality games by pushing developers to the brink. An ex-Naughty Dog employee revealed that a co-worker was reportedly hospitalized due to being overworked during the development of The Last of Us Part II and some have wondered if they can keep pushing themselves like this without seriously damaging their health. Naughty Dog made strides to change this, especially after the pandemic opened up the possibility of working from home, but many have wondered if those changes would sustain toward the end of development on its new game, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.
Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet‘s Release Window Will Repeat a Similar Strategy to Past Naughty Dog Games
A new report from Bloomberg claims that Naughty Dog developers are starting to see more crunch implemented as the game nears its final year of development. Bloomberg stated that Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is reportedly scheduled for a mid-2027 release at the moment. That would likely place it in late/spring or summer, not unlike the launches of Uncharted 4 and both Last of Us games, which came out in May and June, respectively.
However, the game has apparently missed a number of deadlines, and in October, employees were forced to work a minimum of 8 extra hours a week (but no more than 60 hours a week total) to help get the game’s production back on track and finish an internal demo. Most of the studio’s schedule has supposedly returned to normal, but developers fear what’s to come in the final stretch of development.
As of right now, it’s unclear when we will next to see Intergalactic. It’s possible that the aforementioned internal demo will be used later in 2026 to reveal the first proper gameplay to fans, but it’s likely being used to show the game’s progress to producers and executives at Sony. Sometimes these gameplay demos, particularly ones shown publicly, can create a lot of crunch as developers have to finish or polish up parts of the game that may not be ready in order to be shown off to an audience.
Will Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet Be Delayed?
The other key thing here is that there’s a very key possibility that Intergalactic could get delayed. Although the Bloomberg article mentions nothing about this, if these concerns from employees make enough noise, Naughty Dog may deem it not worth crunching employees to release the game mid-2027. Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet could push to fall, in order to give developers more room to breathe and maybe allow it to be a PS6 launch title. However, all we can do is speculate for the time being. It all depends on if Naughty Dog can create a schedule that is achievable.
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