Update: It appears that this one week lead time on Last of Us Part II downloads may only be region specific. Users outside of the US have reported projected download dates of June 17th, just two days before release. Credit: @_CMWalsh
We are now less than four weeks from Naughty Dog’s highly anticipated release of The Last of Us Part II. Pre-load on PlayStation 4 is nothing new, but the norm is for a game to begin downloading to consoles around 72 hours before release, however that doesn’t seem to be the case here.
According to the countdown splash screen, pre-loading will begin a full week before release. This is likely due to the games size (reportedly 100GB) and the fact that internet bandwidth has been under heavy pressure in recent months due to COVID-19.
Plenty of gamers also live in areas with sketchy internet speeds at the best of times and so this will allow all users to have the game downloaded and ready to go when it finally launches on June 19th. We here at VDZE Media are super excited for the games release and will have a review posted as soon as we can.
-Jessica