Report: The Last of Us originally due to get E3 unveil

The Last of Us was meant to be unveiled at E3 earlier this year, not at the Spike Video Game Awards last weekend.

The info is mentioned as part of a Eurogamer preview written by Johnny Minkley, which he also wrote that the secrecy of the project could have been pulled from Naughty Dog thanks to a lost iPad, belonging to writer on the project and creative director Neil Druckmann, which contained the VGAs trailer.

Before the E3 unveil was pulled, the studio included a small easter egg in Uncharted 3 which appeared to tease the title, but this was forgotten after the reveal was canned. This was discovered by the internet, and backed up by VG247, just a mere few days before the VGA unveil.

Naughty Dog co-president Evan Wells emailed staff before the announce to warn not to slip it up on Facebook or Twitter, noting: "Don't be that guy."

He said to Minkley: "We were very serious about keeping it a secret, limiting the people that we're exposed to it even internally in Sony. It never crossed our mind that putting an easter egg like that in Uncharted 3 would rat us out."

The Last of Us is set to release in either late 2012 or early 2013 for PS3.