To release and support The Last of Us Online we’d have to put all our studio resources behind supporting post launch content for years to come, severely impacting development on future single-player games. So, we had two paths in front of us: become a solely live service games studio or continue to focus on single-player narrative games that have defined Naughty Dog’s heritage.
It’s good that they didn’t bother continuing the project, but I’m surprised it wasn’t canceled earlier. ND are clearly a singleplayer studio, and supporting a large scale live service game would need some massive restructuring, all for a game nobody really asked for. Glad they didn’t go through with it.