Providing Naughty Dog with a way to ease itself into the transition from PlayStation 3 to PlayStation 4 was part of the motivation for developing The Last of Us Remastered, according to community strategist Arne Meyer.

Remastered is an enhanced PS4 version of last year’s acclaimed PS3 game. Meyer told CVG the prospect of bringing the game to PS4 was brought up soon after the PS3 version was completed, and it was viewed as one way to help the studio’s future PS4 development.

“We’re always building on top of what we’ve done previously, and The Last of Us Remastered is probably one of the more concrete examples in a way.”

“We had been working on a PS4 engine and tools for a while at that point,” he said. “There were a couple of reasons that we decided to do it and one was that we thought back to when we had to build an engine from scratch when moving between PS2 and PS3–that was a really painful time for the studio and we wanted to avoid that with PS4. Nothing helps a transition between consoles more than making a full game, because you learn so much about what you need for tools.”

Naughty Dog works with “such an iterative process” that every game it makes benefits the next in some way, according to Meyer. “We’re always building on top of what we’ve done previously, and The Last of Us Remastered is probably one of the more concrete examples in a way,” he said. “We’re making this in a way that benefits our PS4 tools pipeline so that we can have a good head start on our next, full PS4 game.”

Naughty Dog said earlier this year it has at least two “brand-new experiences” in development, one of which is likely Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. The studio’s lead programmer, Jason Gregory, shared a similar sentiment with GameSpot recently, telling us developing Remastered was “like taking a crash course in PS4.”

Meyer also cited something Sony has said–that a large number of PS4 owners never got to play The Last of Us on PS3–as another reason that pushed the studio to make Remastered, which was developed over the course of about six months.

Remastered arrives on PS4 today for $50, and according to the first reviews–read ours in full here–it’s well worth a look, particularly if you haven’t played it before. Sony isn’t offering a discount to owners of the PS3 version, but trade in a PS3 copy at GameStop and you’ll be able to get Remastered for only $25.

Chris Pereira is a freelance writer for GameSpot, and you can follow him on Twitter @TheSmokingManX
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