When HBO announced that it was working on a TV adaptation ofThe Last of Us, a lot of people questioned what the point of an adaptation was, and if it would find an audience at all. The games are basically just video game versions of a typical HBO drama, anyway, but now that the first season has come and gone and the second season is airing, I can’t leave the house and meet up with friends without themwanting to talk to me about The Last of Us.
It occurred to me last week after someone asked me ifa rumor aboutsomethinghappening to Joel was realthat this was Sony’s plan working as the company hoped. The Last of Us is inescapable right now.
The Talking Dead
I’m not a huge fan of The Last of Us’ show. I think it’s fine enough, but it pales in comparison to the games. That said, I still think it’s cool that a video game is dominating so much of the cultural conversation. All of my non-gamer friends (yes, I have those) have been absolutely mesmerized by the show and its character dynamics, and keep using me as a resource to temperature check theirtheories on where the story might goin the second and third seasons.
I’ve been rehashing old talking points about the morality of the choices Joel made at the end of The Last of Us season one that, to me, are a little stale and played out. But to my friends, they’re gripping conversations since they haven’t been having them since the first game came out in 2013. With how much more controversialThe Last of Us Part 2was, I’ll be curious to hear some fresh perspectives from them if the show sticks with the same narrative beats as the game.
Pick Up A PS5 While You’re At It
Getting The Last of Us in the public eye again is great for Sony, because more people talking about the show means more people watching the show, which means more people might be interested inbuying a PS5to check out the games for themselves. I’ve seen it happen myself: one of my non-gamer friends picked up a PS5 and a copy of The Last of Us Part 1 whenthe final episode of the first season aired.
While he didn’t get particularly far on account of not being much of a gamer, I still think it’s cool that the HBO show made him consider picking up gaming as a hobby. When looking atthe staggering sales numbers of Part 1 following the HBO adaptation’s first episode, it’s clear that my friend wasn’t the only person who gave the game a shot after being hooked by the TV show.
I imagine that sales for The Last of Us Part 2 are skyrocketing right now, too, though we haven’t heard anything on the sales reporting side just yet. If the show’s second season ends where I think it’ll end based on how Part 2 is structured, I think we’ll see a second surge in Part 2 saleson account of HBO fanswanting to get some resolution on the potential cliffhanger.
The Real Purpose Of The Last Of Us HBO
Of course, all of this is by design. While there are plenty of reasons to love the show, including the plethora of great artists and creatives attached to it, it seems pretty clear that it’s meant to be a pipeline into buying a PS5 and picking upThe Last of Us Complete, and then God of War: Ragnarok, and so on and so forth. The pipeline works the other way too, by enticing PlayStation fans to watch the HBO show with promises of a new vision for The Last of Us. Synergy.
There’s nothing wrong with that, by the way. Corporate art has to be made to be marketable and appeal to wide audiences, and once a company has hit the ceiling for how many people they think might buy a video game, it makes a lot of sense to start branching out to other mediums to entice people to buy more games. This isn’t exclusively a Sony strategy; we see companies like Disney andNintendodo the exact same thing in their own ways.
So, congratulations, Sony, you’ve made The Last of Us inescapable for more than a decade, and given the popularity of the show and the fact that we’re getting another season at some point down the line, it might be inescapable for the next decade to come. I just wonder if we’re going to see a huge sales spike for Top Golf now that thatthinghas happened.
