The COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic has negatively affected the global economy and disrupted many businesses in the process, including the games industry. Major gaming events like E3 2020 and GDC 2020 have been cancelled, while developers are mandating that their employees work from home.

As such, gamers have been appropriately worried about the scheduled and planned release dates for upcoming highly-anticipated games. For instance, Sony and PlayStation have huge titles on the way, including the likes of Naughty Dog’s The Last Of Us Part II and Square Enix’s Final Fantasy VII Remake.

Earlier today, Sony has released an official statement on how the COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic has affected their business practices and output. For their Game & Network Services Segment (which includes everything related to PlayStation), they said (via press release):

“Sony estimates that there will be no material impact on this business for the current fiscal year.

Although no issues have emerged so far,

Sony is carefully monitoring the risk of delays in production schedules for game software titles at both its first-party studios and partner studios,

primarily in Europe and the U.S.”

To that end, Sony has also revealed that they have shut down both of its manufacturing plants in Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur and Penang) for the period between 18 March and 14 April 14 2020. This is in accordance with the Malaysian Government’s currently-ongoing Movement Control Order mandate.

They also said that their business has been impacted by factors such as restrictions on the movement of people across national borders, which makes it difficult for Sony to send engineers to manufacturing hubs such as China and countries in Southeast Asia (including the aforementioned Malaysian plants above).

Sony has also temporarily shut down all of its film and television production, which means that more of their upcoming movies will likely be delayed or postponed. These include major motion pictures like Morbius and Venom 2, amongst others.

It remains to be seen if upcoming games will be delayed, but it seems highly likely at this point in time that The Last Of Us Part II will probably be delayed yet again. Just be prepared for the worst-case scenario, folks.

In the meantime, you’ll still have other great games like Nioh 2 to play.