They might as well pull a Zelda BOTW scenario where they release it on PS4 and PS5 on the same day

FFVII is coming out in just over a week, it was gold and probably being printed before corona locked down most of europe and the USA. I think FFVII is the last big game to not be majorly effected (and its still been effected). Some developers will happily rely on digital, but I think sony just decided it'd be better to wait for the PS4's magnum opus to have a traditional launch. The situation could be what tip them into making it a cross gen PS5 launch title

Good point! Although I doubt they would have stopped, they would be working remotely but that is not going to be as productive and so some launch titles may miss their target. So far the only 1st party title rumoured is Ratchet. 

Fair enough. 

Dang. That stinks. :(

This was due to logistics reason, as in the post from Sony, not development reason. The game is finished according to Naughty Dog - they are just bug-fixing. But logistics refers to the unknown aspect of making the physical copies and, more importantly in this case I am thinking, the shipping aspect.

We just saw this play out with FF7R. Square-Enix warned they can't control the shipping of the title. Usually when a large-scale game ships, it goes to the warehouses at UPS/FedEx/whatever shipping company is in that country, with an embargo date of "do not deliver until such-and-such time." This takes up valuable warehouse space during those weeks until the retail date arrives.

Since we are in a pandemic, almost all shipping companies are (rightly) prioritizing keeping their warehouses efficient so they can get in needed medical supplies and household items and ship them out as fast as they can. They don't care about keeping thousands of copies of a game until a certain date, or may not get them in right away at all if it means space lost to more important things. That is why FF7R is already released in Australia (shipping companies didn't want to keep the stock in their warehouses) and might not ship on time in other countries (most likely a lot of Europe, especially Spain and Italy).

It was too late for FF7R I am sure since generally you start mass-producing a game 4-5 weeks ahead of time. But we all know Naughty Dog, and i know they wouldn't want an entire country getting the game two weeks early - or not getting it on time at all. They want everyone to experience their new story at the same time.

What a bummer.

Understandable though.

Not that there aren't worse things going on. My family has two who lost their jobs due to the flu hit on the economy. I bet many others here are facing similar issues. We should just skip to 2021.

First tragedy of April

I was thinking the same thing. But perhaps that would be a brilliant move. Look at what happened with Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - it got delayed enough that it became a cross-gen release on Wii U/Switch. And in the process, instantly made the Switch a massive success - and still continues to post big sales numbers to this day. Imagine TLoU 2 coming out as a PS4 game and launch-date PS5 title at the same time!

I think the game will be made playable on PS5 at launch so they don't compete, assuming the PS5 will still be launching this year. There will be a big drought coming in Spring/summer.