Today, Sony issued a special statement in which it offered a full and frank apology to director Neil Druckman for the recent interview published on the PlayStation Blog, which the director claimed was severely distorted.
Druckmann took to the internet to clarify that he had not stated that his next project would redefine the video game industry and that his interview with the PlayStation Blog had been heavily distorted and edited.
Sony described the error as serious and the information was conveyed inaccurately. Sony's statement, which you can see here, said the following:
“After reviewing our recent interview with Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckman, we found several important inaccuracies and discrepancies that do not represent his views and values (including topics such as animation, writing, technology, AI, and future projects). We apologize to Neil for the misrepresentation of his words and for any negative impact this interview may have had on him and the team. In coordination with Naughty Dog and SIE, we have removed the interview.”
As stated in the statement, Sony has removed the entire interview and we believe it will be republished again after being re-edited and based on the statements provided by Drukma.
Original speech by Neil Druckmann:
Well, I've been very lucky because I've actually gotten to do that. I've had the opportunity to do a lot of my dream projects. I'm working on a new project right now. That's probably the project I'm most excited about so far. I can't talk about it because my bosses will get really mad at me. And I think in general, there's something happening right now that I think is really cool. Which is there's a new appreciation for games that I've never experienced before. Like when I was little, games were something that was just for kids. Now it's open to everyone. But it's like if you're a gamer, you know the potential of games, whereas non-gamers don't know what they're missing. But my hope was that when we made The Last of Us as a TV series, we could change that. That's why I was so interested in it. I wanted it to be good so badly, because I wanted that to happen, and it's like someone would watch the show and really enjoy it. And they'd fall in love with these characters the same way we fell in love with them, with these characters and their story. Then he finally realizes, “Wait, this is based on a video game?” And then he goes and looks at the game and sees the richness of the stories and everything that happens in the games. So now I feel like there’s some kind of a spotlight on games. And you know, Fallout just came out. That’s a huge success for Amazon. I think that’s amazing. Not that games need to be movies, or TV shows, I think they just open the eyes of a lot of people who weren’t familiar with the kind of experiences that are found in games. I think we’ve reached a tipping point now where people are going to realize, “Oh my God, there are all these amazing animated experiences in games!” So I’m excited not only about this project that we’re doing — which is very new to us — but I’m also excited to see how the world reacts to it. Because of The Last of Us and the success of the series, people outside of the gaming world are looking to us to see what we’re going to release next. I’m really excited to see how people react to that, and I’ve talked about that a lot. I’ll stop there. So ask me about my dream projects. I've been very fortunate to work on my favorite games with incredible collaborators and I'm very grateful to them.
