Reaction: Sony's Live Service Push Has Been a Disaster of Utterly Insane Proportions

I never want to hear again from PlayStation sycophants that this live service initiative still needs to be pursued. How many literal billions of wasted dollars, job losses, studio closures, and wasted time and opportunities will it take to convince people that this was a terrible idea at the beginning and is still one now?

Utter disaster is still an understatement.

Surely we can't sink any further from this point on..... right?

On pure speculation I do wonder what was the catalyst for Sony pressing the red button on these games? Concord right? I'm still amazed that Fairgame$ (awful name) is still going forward.

@AlexPorto Honestly, we struggled to write any headline that properly describes the sheer ineptitude of this live service push.

They really had to learn the hard way. Oh well.

@RBMango Exactly. I don't really care how much money Sony lost, but the time and effort from the devs are lost forever. Talent wasted.

End of an error.

@Oram77 I will be astonished if Bend Studio isn't closed. I don't want them to go, but I can't imagine this iteration of PlayStation sinking more money into them for another five-year development cycle after canceling the game they have spent years working on. Days Gone 2 would have been the far smarter move in hindsight.

@Anke Really all that needs to be typed! Despite how disastrous this whole initiative has been, the company is still far from failing.

On the day that Nintendo Switch 2 was officially announced too, a console that will inevitably sell gangbusters. They’ve scored so many own goals that it’s more impressive that Xbox aren’t taking ground off them.

Two culprits behind this mess:
1. Old Jimbo, who already left the company and i bet his smiling big at his yacht right now.
2. Hermen Hulst, Jimbo's best Sith apprentice who needs to leave Sony asap because he's destroying Sony 1st party studios with his unhealthy live service obsessions.

Totoki or any Sony higher ups needs to act fast to get rid off Hermen.

@RBMango If they closed Bend and Bluepoint I would never forgive Sony, period.
Edit: if I recall I think it was Bend themselves who canned the idea of days gone 2 (could highly be mixing that up with something else)

They need to buy a publisher to help pump out some games regularly whilst they get their current teams back on track to producing a game every 4-5 years. Then leave the live service games to Bunjie and San Diego, and have the other studios only do live service if it's side content to their single player games like with Ghost of Tsushimas legends mode and TLOU Factions.

They wasted the majority of the console generation over live service crap.

This reminds me of rock steady and Crystal dynamics... millions and years of talent wasted chasing that elusive cash cow and now bend and bluepoint too!

Just imagine how good we would be eating the last few years if all these studios would have just played to their talents, rather than some out of touch, trend chasing sony CEO dictating them what to make... this is truly pathetic!

I think there's definitely room for some live service projects, but they need to be very sporadic, and more importantly, innovative and unique. Not everything needs to be Destiny, or a COD clone or just a popular property/IP live service-ized.

Despite the failures, it feels like the approach is just "throw ***** at the wall and see what sticks." It's ok if a few fail, but you never know when we'll get another Helldivers 2 on our hands!

I know everyone likes to point to Helldivers II as the exception. But I still hold firm that it's a successful game, not necessarily a successful live-service. I doubt it makes Fortnite/Marvel Rivals/even Dead by Daylight microtransaction money. So is it really evidence of the power of live-service? I wouldn't say so.

And that's not at all a bad thing, but still begs the question: why hasn't Sony kept the focus on high-quality, innovative experiences rather than assuming recognizable IP + live-service = money?

And I know people will say: "there's no inherent harm in pursuing live-service." And there isn't. But there is harm in trying to restructure your entire company to focus on the fickle golden goose above what has traditionally provided sustainability. Just glad they're trying to change course before managing to implode their unprecedented success.

What Ryan and Hulst did here is just inhuman:

• They knew that they forced these studios to do something they never did before, and
• they knew that some projects are very likely to be killed, even several years after development or just weeks after release.

If I were a developer in a PS studio, I would try to find a new employer right now, because my talent and years of work should matter.

I hope that Totoki stops this madness NOW.

I suppose this is a disaster that needed to happen for Sony to get back to their single player focus, it's just a shame so much time, money and people's jobs were wasted in the process. On the bright side things can only get better from here and hopefully Ghost of Yotei and Intergalactic perform very well so that Sony remain committed to single player games.

Also, it's really weird coming out of many-a heated debate about this pursuit for Fortnite-money compromising PlayStation's heart, soul, and lead ostensibly in the right.

I still sincerely question the reasoning behind people blindly supporting Sony's business decisions on faith and loyalty — regardless of if they openly admitted it wasn't the direction they personally hoped for.

PlayStation should have woken up to this much sooner, what a shame all these great IPs and studios working away on projects chasing the live service dream that’ll never be seen. If only they would have stuck to their roots, now there’s a barren wasteland of releases … sad. At least the Switch 2 will be coming out soon and that’s hopefully got some games to look forward to

Watching companies like Sony ***** the bed like this because they refuse to acknowledge the similarities between the live-service and MMO segments (they're functionally the same thing, MMOs were live-service games before the concept even existed) and consequently spend no time actually learning about or hiring truly knowledgeable people to lead their big investments into a new part of gaming.

While this isn't, "Needs to spend $80B just to be able to ship some games." levels of bad, the hilarious overpayment for Bungie all those years back was a very very telling sign of how little Sony understood about what they were getting into.

And surprise surprise, they have a growing house of expensive dead/cancelled live-service games with only one meaningful hit to speak of. A hit that caught them completely by surprise, too.

Excellent article.
I agree with all points. Live service games are dishonest addictive and shallow. Corporate greed is a reason they are appealing, at no benefit to the consumer. Want to feel like you are being scammed? Get yourself investested in crap like fortnite.

Herman Hulst should be sacked. He has no business being at the helm of a games company, particularly one with the history playstation has.

Wasn't there an article a few days ago defending Sony's push to live service? Make your minds up please.

I don't blame Sony for this entirely. They can't keep making these massive AAA blockbuster epics that take 5-6 years to make and cost crazy amounts of money and hope they get some of that back.

"why play Marvel Rivals when Overwatch 2 exists?" well clearly everyone didn't get the memo cause MR is dominating over OW2 and Sony is trying to get in on that. It's just not working as well as they would like.

@nessisonett MS scored the biggest own possible last gen so there's no beating that.

I miss the days when nobody pretended to care about Sonys first party output and just played the billion others games that got released on PlayStation.

I'm calling it now, Fairgame$ is going to be cancelled and Haven Studio will be closed.

I'll continue to say there's nothing wrong with live services. Look at the Gacha juggernauts, they make money hand over fist. Marvel Rivals is a Live Service game as well. The problem is, and I'll repeat ad nauseum, Sony continues to try to tap into the incorrect market. Twitter does not play video games. Make games for gamers again.

It's like they said, they don't care if multiple live service games fail. Just as long as they have one that sticks. They don't care about the game itself, only if it's something that can make them money.

I cant blame them for wanting to push for live service, since the market seems very receptive to it. I know many people here say live service is trash(and i tend to agree), but the numbers show that that’s what people are overwhelmingly playing.

While i do think this has been a disaster in terms of live service push. They still have to find a solution to funding these triple A games that everyone is looking for. They cant be the only publisher without a cashcow game to fund their games.

However putting all their eggs in one basket, and making studios that excel in singleplayer games work on live service, was definitely not the way to go about. Cancelling these games at least shows they are making better decisions now.

Lets not forget, games get cancelled all the time, most of them just dont get headlined like this, these games werent even announced yet.

@Fartingale There was days like that??? 🤔

@Nepp67 Fairgame$, letsss GO!!! BAYBEEE.

@DennisReynolds I think you might be referring to Khayl Adam's article, in response to Marvel Rivals earning a lot of money. This article is not written by the same person so I guess that should explain it.

A total disaster. Make no mistake, Jim Ryan did not retire from PlayStation. He was pushed out of the company, mutiny or otherwise. Any retirement is cutting his losses. Under his leadership the brand suffered immensely. PlayStation still has many absolutely incredible titles, but I genuinely hope no more decisions of this magnitude are made in the foreseeable future.

Can they not repurpose their canceled work into a single player campaign game? Surely all of that work can be cut up and used for a 10 hour single player story driven game to get something back from the investment.

@Wardenknight133 It is a little disingenuous, though, that these articles aren't typically advertised as opinion pieces.

@Meowmixes98 Maybe some art, assets, and mechanics. But the majority, I'm sure, would need to be tossed.

@RoomWithaMoose Pretty fitting game for Sony rn lol

When bean-counters make company decisions. And guess who will pay the price? It never changes.

"but what if we get it right next time?" - Hermen Hulst 🙄

Seriously, think for a moment how many small scale independent studios could have been financially supported by Sony/SIE over these past few years. Studios that could themselves potentially hit live service, latest craze or cult hit gold with the type of genuine artisan creativity that can only be achieved in small passionate teams.

Sony could have literally given heaps of money to every single genuine independent game studio and in return published their games for them... for free! And it would still have been money better spent with much more chance of a positive return on it than what they have got by backing all of these failed and binned "AAA live service" ideas.

Mind boggling stuff.

"...having now spent the best part of an entire console generation pissing away time, money, and effort on chasing down a delusional dream."

Well written. Hear, hear. Sony has gone entirely off the rails.

They really overstepped and lost the main picture, which is their platform. That is what their studios are for. To sell the platform and the software in a harmonious way.
For some reason they started thinking like a 3rd party publisher and that had it's consequences. They need to focus on their strengths. I guess Astro bot showed them the way. Not every one of these projects needs to be a multi year huge team open world. But quality single player experiences are what Sony is good at and where they need to go back to. That is what increases the value of the platform.

Also, Live services are not something you throw 10 at the wall and hope it sticks. Live services are saturated and it requires a big IP, a good developer, commitment to content support and player feedback and it must make sense. Like this god of war LS thing. It was a disaster waiting to happen. GoW is a single player game. Learn not to do that. It must make sense.

It has been awful. I understand the need to pursue live service games — there is good money to be made — but the decision(s) surrounding which games to promote and to cancel have hindered progress. Moreover, they are having these high profile studios spending years making these games, only to cancel them years later, deep in development. Ultimately, this has caused a delay in what could have been a prominent couple of first few years for the PS5. It’s just a really disappointing situation all around.

Yeah, we better hope and pray they have some good second-party projects lined up for these last 4 years (?) of the PS5 that we don’t know about otherwise it’s going to be slim pickin’s first-party wise. 🤦🏽‍♂️

Honestly time all these studios rebound from canceled projects I'd say Playstation Studios won't hit it's stride again until PS6 generation

Somebody please step into the console space to replace Microsoft and kick Sony's ever-loving teeth in for the neverending parade of errors and bad management this generation.

It's a race to the bottom for those two companies.

Gamers: we dont want live service games

Sony: Cancells live service games in development

Gamers: OH My GoD! What a waste.

Also Gamers: spends 136 Million dollars in Marvel Rivals in 1 month

The problem isn't the push, but rather what kind of public they want to gather with this push.

So far HD2 was successful because it didn't have any competition in the online PvE co-op space, which means the game was the go to for many people that want to play with friends without going the eSports route.

Sony could do the same with other genres, make an arcade racing game since those are dying and all we have are simutators everywhere, make 3v3 or 2v2 goofy fighting game like clayfighters, make a knockoff monster hunter game, etc.

@3Above Haha, so true! I bet its hard for a publisher to make all gamers happy, since its such a widely fragmented group. While it was a waste, we should probably be happy those games got cancelled.

@Nem Yes i agree, the ‘lets see what sticks’ approach was bad. And titles should definitely make sense. Not try to morph all singleplayer games and turn them into live service.

@AdamNovice Yeah, this makes sense!

Everyone blaming Hultz, but I think he is actually CORRECTING the mistakes made now that he is CEO. These titles were not of high quality and were made in desperation (because of Microsoft buying COD) by Jim Ryan, who made plenty of great decisions btw, the live-service push was not one of them.

@Wardenknight133 Oh i know that but it doesn't reflect good on the site where one day its pro Sony live service and the next day its dead against them.

They just need a good State of Play next month announcing Bloodborne 2, Killzone 5, Uncharted 5, Venom, new IP from Santa Monica and everyone will forget about all of this lol.

I mean i’m as frustrated as any other, but the hyperbole in these comment sections are going through the roof 😂

Video Games in general are in a downward slump. Given today's Switch 2 'reveal', looks like it's gonna be a long slump.

@Xbox_Dashboard Yeah what was with that ‘reveal’? It was so underwhelming. Thats how they decided to introduce a whole new console? 😐

Don’t care for live service🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮

So I’m glad that those live service games are getting cancelled and failing 🤑👀

Yes, Helldivers 2 did well, it was a success, but you can't have 2, 3, 4, 5 success in a row when it comes to online games.

Having 1 or 2 studios to focus on live service is fine, but you shouldn't take every freaking studio to focus on that.

@AdamNovice Sure. But we could get more single player games if Jimbo and Hermen didn't forced their live service obsession. All the time and money that has been wasted for these cancelled live service projects could been used for remaster, remake, or sequel of classic IP that the fans keeps asking for years.

@LogicStrikesAgain Yeah I'm not happy the time money and dev labour's was wasted but I'm glad they cut their losses here in stead of having 2 more Concords.

@3Above Yup, I agree! And while i am definitely frustrated, i do also think its getting blown a little bit out of proportion. These games weren’t even announced. Projects get cancelled everytime, usually we won’t hear about it, these just made the headlines. People who dont like live service should be glad that these games got cancelled.

On another note, I agree with @UltimateOtaku91 that to fill in these gaps, they should acquire a studio or publisher with a steady output of good games. And take a hands off approach and let them do their thing.

We keep being told how expensive games are becoming to make. Management indulging in delusional bandwagon-jumping is considerably more difficult to swallow as an excuse to for higher prices than spiraling production costs.

I just can't fathom how anyone at Sony looked at a live service God of War game and thought it would be a good idea. They're just trying to blindly chase the money prospects and that's it.

You can check my history. I’ve said for a long time that the PlayStation five generation is decent to good, but it’s still easily the worst PlayStation generation I’ve ever experienced.

It’s insane to me that they had a working model that they just completely abandoned to try to rip off Fortnite.

Look at uncharted 4 for example. It had a really good single player mode with a good tacked on multiplayer. All they had to do was add a new level every few months and add a compact battle pass that gave new costumes and emotes and I still likely would’ve been playing that game more than what I do now.

These companies getting hooked on the idea that everything has to be a grand scale is biting them in the ass. A Monetized uncharted 4 multiplayer didn’t need to provide a living world. It just needed some new levels, costumes and emotes, and it could’ve lived for years. Hell, the game is still pretty active. I still play it.

Oh well.

@OmegaStriver This! I dont understand why this isnt a viable template anymore? Those ‘tacked on’ multiplayers worked fine, and can attract and attain players with the right amount of new content. Thats all they have to do, not reinvent the wheel. Give me Factions, Uncharted and Killzone multiplayer and i’ll be happy!

Couldn’t agree more, this entire generation feels just wasted by PlayStation.

@jFug they've recently confirmed the 2nd half will be more packed with 1st party compared to the first half of the generation.

@EMQZ Hermen shared the same blame as Jimbo. Hermen was the one who believe on Concord as "Sony Star Wars" and from recent interview Hermen also wants to continue with live service games despite Concord massive flops.

Here we go again

You spent decades building your brand and your company's strengths. And then in a span of a few years you throw all of that away to try and chase trends. This was only ever going to end in disaster. Stick to your bread and butter. It's what got you success in the past and it's what will get you success in the future. Astro Bot is what makes PlayStation great. Not Concord.

Sony is pissing away money like it’s got Microsoft bank accounts!

On one hand, it's a good thing that Sony cancels these GaaS games this early.

On the other, it's sad to think that Bluepoint's 1st original game would be a live-service that could have tainted their brand had Sony decided not to cancel the project.

Looks like it's going to take a long while before we could see the next Bluepoint game and it could be a PS6 game

Sony has truly wasted their time and money this generation

Sony's just getting their ego smacked around all angles, but apparently it's needed.

We're talking about the same company that had a massive hack and leaks pertaining to bad out-of-touch ideas pertaining to Spider-Man villains years ago. Everyone at the time said those movies were going to suck and that they were awful ideas, every trailer led to people complaining how much it's going to suck, and they still tried to make a Spider-man Villain MCU anyway and flamed out spectacularly. And even then, the CEO's arguing that the movies were not bad, critics just hated them for SOME reason.

It seems like across entertainment, Sony is the embodiment of that Spongebob quote, "How many times do we have to teach you this lesson old man!?"

Is not just the fact that they wasted so much resources is that they chose baffling games like Concord, Fairgame$ and GOW when they have actual ips that would translate perfectly to live service.

Socom, Warhawk, Resistance, Killzone, MAG are just a few IPs that are dying to make Sony some of that live service money but that's too easy why not greenlight Concord 2: this time 698 active players!

You nailed it in this article. This has been the worst generation for PlayStation by a mile, and has put such a sour taste in my mouth. That I rarely even spend money anymore on there store. Been the backlog and nothing else. Lesson learned though. I'll wait four to five years into the PS6s life cycle and see what direction they're going in before I ever think of supporting another PlayStation console.

I suppose that's also the reason why Shuhei Yoshida left. It is really mind boggling how a big player like Sony can be mismanaged in this way.

@ShogunRok Is Foamsters not in the article b/c it's not 1st party or b/c you had so many train wrecks to write about you couldn't remember them all? 😩

I play a lot of live service games, though not as many as Sammy, so I'm fine with them existing and more being made, but it really feels like Sony was forcing them on device and they weren't made organically, and I don't think games or music or books or movies or art ever works out well that way. Forcing the issue is the problem.

With the time it takes to make ANY game these days, there’s probably little chance that we’ll see anything from Bend or Bluepoint this generation. Unless they had other projects that they were working on that we don’t know about. This live service push, barring Helldivers 2, has been a huge waste of time…as most people suspected from the start.

Imagine if Microsoft didn't bungle two console generations in a row. Sony would've been in serious trouble. I'm very disappointed this is what Bluepoint had been working on.

I'm fine with this.

@Ludacritz Imagine if the future for Sony and MS is hybrid consoles, and they have to compete directly with Nintendo.
...lol.

@3Above Oh? And you think that is easy to replicate?
Does Sony have an IP the size of Marvel?

You are acting like this just happened by accident. Marvel rivals wasn't just thrown to the wall to see if it sticks.
They got the presentation and a rich IP.
Also Netease has to split the profits with Disney.

@Ken_Kaniff I play almost exclusively PS4 games on my Portal, though I have been playing a lot of Cyberpunk recently. It's messed up, but the PS5 is mainly for my kids to play whatever the most recent big thing is.

The only thing i think is: Fire Herman Hulst.

Simply unforgivable from my want for Sony Studios epic single player AAA games.

Shows how lucky we might be that Ghost 2 got the green light and SP got left alone.

The sheer level of incompetence displayed by the management is something to awe in. How can they get it so wrong, I hope Sony Japan take control over PlayStation from the west, since ps4 days it’s just gotten worse every year.

One of SIE Worldwide Studios strengths back amongst the PS4 era with the the likes of Layden,Shuhei Yoshida etc.,was their talking about the creative freedoms they apparently had. Not to say there weren't setbacks (God of War needed reworking after one infamous Yoshida visit).

Unfortunately as Jim Ryan & Hermen Hulst became aware of the Activision whispers their approach was much like Netflix's reaction to everyone starting up their own streaming service & greenlight anything with the proviso it had live service or be standalone online.

Add to that wooing Bungie & taking their upper management (& spin offs like those involved with Concord),& Hulst seemingly surrounding himself with other Guerilla or Bungie experts & the departures of dev studio veterans & a lack of anyone to push back & when Sony accountants started questioning what the outlays had brought back in you get the results.

Whilst Hulst in his rare Jim Ryan like interviews had already seemed to have little appreciation of Playstation's gaming IP vault,it feels like he's had more misses than hits in terms of shutting projects & studios down & yet has been promoted rather than shown the door.😑

Helldivers succeeded because it brought something new. It's not just shooter.

Well done Push Square for standing up and calling this out 👍

If one positive comes out of this, it will hopefully be that EA, Ubisoft, WB etc may take heed with their recent live service failures too and all start shifting away from this horrible trend

The article forgets to mention London Studios and other great studios that have been shuttered during the time. Weren't they also live service games?

I told you so!! Very happy with this news. Can't wait for the news that they cancelled Fairgames. Another pointless live service game designed to milk money out of gamers. Hopefully this means a change in course for Sony but also a change in general for the gaming scene. People are tired and fed up with all the shady business models for games. I can't stand live service games. Yet people keep buying 30 dollar skins in Call of Duty and Fifa packs in Fifa. Why i ask myself? Just give your money to poor people and help them instead of wasting money on digital items that are worthless the next day.

Sony built their entire console brand and userbase on AAA single player games - its literally what allowed them to win the generations where building a userbase mattered most.

A strong AAA Single player exclusive line up may not make them mega money, but it does something much more important in protecting this userbase - thats where the real money is for Sony, and EVERYTHING else should be seen as an investment towards this.

The funny thing about helldivers 2 is nobody see it coming, you can't just "make" successful live service games, it nearly about luck (the games has to be good too of course), being at the right time and place, like fortnite pivot to battle royale, helldivers 2 success, or marvel rivals eating overwatch 2 launch.

The only sure success that I can think of is call of duty free to play game (cod warfare), and when some cod top people goes to EA and make cod rivals, apex legend. And maybe overwatch 1 since blizzard at that time can't do no wrong.

@Rich33 Yes, this 100%, sony should focus only on making the best console with the lowest price and best exclusives so many people bought it and buy 3rd party games, the more people buy games, the more successful sony becomes, receiving 30% cut of games sold.

That's it, no need to be greedy, looks at nintendo when making live service games, they don't copy other games, but making their unique games like splatoon or dlc for mario kart, don't make games if the only reason is "ceo like money, live service is money, so make live service games".

A wasteland of releases may lie ahead of us, but luckily a big backlog is smiling behind us

@Bramble Thank god for PoE2 Early Access that will have my full attention between the few singleplayer releases we will get coming years. Next for me: Sniper Elite: Resistance in 11 days !!

I am still having so much fun with Helldivers 2, but agree with the sentiments above. As a long time gamer but recent switch from XSX to PS5, I have enough first party games on my Wishlist to last this out, for the rest of you, you'll be playing all those first party Microsoft games I've been enjoying the last few years!

Regardless of where the games come from, 2025 is looking crazy stacked with great releases, so I doubt anybody will be sat at home twiddling their thumbs.

Told you so, all those year ago, while the fanboys were cheerleading this on and insulting fans like myself who said this would happen

I feel my comment from last week's article about why Sony should keep pushing for Live Service aged like fine wine. The amount of money wasted is absurd.

Is it expecting too much that Sony might have learned their lesson?

So, Naughty Dog wasted 3 years on game that will never see light of day. Because of that we will be happy if they will manage at least one release during PS5 gen.
Bluepoint managed to release one remake during PS5 gen, but this will be only game on PS5.
And Bend? They released game in 2019 and they will be glad if they will squeeze another game in this decade.

What a ***** show. And best thing is that guy responsible for this (Hulst) was promoted to become head of PlayStation. Talking about failing upwards.

Even with the cancellations this generation has still been a decent one for Sony in my opinion and its obviously not all doom and gloom if they are on course to match the previous gen.

As for live service as the article the other day pointed out its the golden goose that companies need to chase because all it takes is one hit and you make bank. Sure they just went heavy handed by trying to do it all at once, but fortunately it was shored up by a good rake of 2nd party exclusives, and they are righting the ship now.

As others have said you can't complain that the games where being made whilst throwing money at stuff like Marvel Rivals as those games prove that live service when it lands is where the money is.

@Sequel ‘no longer 'hip' like ps1/ps2 days, struggling for identity, stinkers like Concord’ - so true! They have totally lost their cool edge, sadly they’re now in their ps5 bloated corporate days, like a sad fat old man that used to be so cool. Sadly they seem to have forgotten about simply making cool games

Games like Helldivers 2 are the exception but far too rare, back in the ps1/ps2 era every other game was a banger. I know they were quicker to develop and cheaper to make back then but they really have made such a mess of things nowadays. I really hope they pick it up this year

A colossal goatcluck. To have Bluepoint working on one is quite possibly the worst of the lot. Why buy a studio with a track record of nothing more than (admittedly excellent remasters and remakes) and task them with a GaaS title from one of your biggest IPs?

Honestly don't get the strategy. Most of the successful live service games have a very similar trajectory.
Make good single player game with decent multiplayer (GTA, FIFA, GT, CoD,etc) or luck out releasing a multiplayer version of a popular game in development (Fortnight) or release a multiplayer variant of popular franchise in a booming genre (apex) then if it hit throw the world at the Live service side and profit!
Of all the live service games Sony went with the only one that looked close to this model and may have been successful was the Last of us but sure the correct model was launch with Last of us 3 (dev cost mostly recouped) if multiplayer was popular (very likely) pivot more Devs towards it and profit. Oh well opportunity missed I guess

Time for them to forget this live service junk, put time and money in the first party etc.
And I see people saying it's OK we got all these great games coming..So what ? We just except the crap and pray for better days, why does sony seem to get a slight pass, sure there is some disgust to sony now, but once Ghost of Yotei or something comes theyll be the best company wver agsin...if this was EA or Ubisoft they'd be crucified for weeks with repeat articles,.
I would just love to be in board meeting and see how these people think and they " brainstorm" their next idea...

@get2sammyb And that ball having the same mass as a neutron star.

Are Marathon and Fairgame$ still actually happening?

I genuinely think that Sony will port a ton of games onto Switch 2 and Xbox this year.

Is shocking. Like I said before Sony would’ve been better off taking their $100’s of millions down to the roulette table.

What concerns me more even after these cancellations, TLoU factions and concord etc is I’m worried they’re still looking at investing in live service heavily. Will blueprint and Bend just be moved to new live service games? Hope not.

No wonder Sonys first party output has paled in comparison to previous gens. Yes games take longer to make but this is the real reason the schedule is thin.

Mad that they’ve bet against what made them successful for 25+ years.

I feel really sad for the developers at London, Pixelopus and elsewhere that could have created single-player games that probably wouldn’t have cost the world to make and generated more revenue than these cancelled projects will clearly ever do. But I am hopeful that recent noises about looking at older IP are a sign that this type of internal analysis has already been underway. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll start to see some smaller, maybe innovative, titles that diversify Sony’s output. All of this might also explain why there have been so few showcases State of Play presentations - maybe there is just little for them to show that’s even close to releasing.

Can't we just get back to fun single player games? No live service, no race/gender politics, just fun immersive single player experiences.

Need someone to insert the "That's a bold strategy Cotton, let's see if it pays off for em" gif from Dodgeball

Someone voted good?

Hermen, what are you doing here? Go back to sinking PlayStation!

PS has been such a disappointment this generation with so much wasted potential and a price hike for their subscriptions. PS5 will probably be my last console and I will fully switch to PC where eventually most PS games can be played anyway. Maybe if Microsoft makes an Xbox with Steam support I could be enticed to buy another console.

The higher ups at Sony have essentially wasted a whole console generation of possible games for multiple studios, thrown away hundreds of millions of dollars, laid off thousands of employees and even shut studios down after their shocking leadership decisions. Will they be held accountable? Will they f...

the take away is this is good news...

Their mistake was dumping their Japanese origins and going fully ret... Western.

Even if they start making only good decisions going forward (and I very much doubt that), you won't be seeing the results of that for many years, far into the PS6's lifespan.

Good article, however I look forward to the inevitable half dozen Sammy articles later today telling us how brilliant all the Gatcha games are.

@Jrs1 until the next article where they say that Sony shouldn’t give up their push

Someone got paid for thinking up this formula. Money making GaaS game + one of Sony's biggest video game characters = it's a simple win... right?

I do like the odd GaaS game (The Division etc), but this idea should have been shut down immediately.

Listen to Aristotle: he said a story should have a beginning, a middle and an end. Not a beginning, a middle and a series of player skins you can purchase with in-game credits.

@AdamNovice It's "Hermen"

The PlayStation 5 has been a completely forgettable console and it’s due to squandering the time, money and effort of great developers on greedy get-rich-quick schemes. As someone who hugely supported every Sony console and bought hundreds of titles for each system, i have no enthusiasm for a PlayStation 6 and will be exclusively Nintendo from now on.

Hermen is a disaster, he has to go. Almost everything he touches turns to *****. He is on the record for having played Concord for years before release and wanted to buy the studio based off of that game. He was heavily involved in the Bungie acquisition too. Fairgame$ is his baby too, and if the initial reaction is any indication of the success of that game, like it was for Concord, it's going to be a major flop. It's supposedly releasing this year, and there is zero hype. Lego Horizon is another astronomical failure in terms of sales, yet Hermen keeps pushing his own franchise onto us as if he created the next Harry Potter. Also, literally every interview he does is full of the most empty generic corporate word salad, I have never even seen a glimpse of a vision towards gaming and the future of PlayStation from him.

Yes, the PS5 is a major success, but it is mostly carried by work from the people who built up the brand and the studios before him. He is destroying PlayStation from within and it'll always take a few years before mismanagement like this is reflected in actual results. What we're seeing now is the beginning of that. Get him out, before it's too late

Wasted soo much time, money and effort for nothing. Said years ago they should have gone for ubisoft instead of bungie. At least with ubisoft they would have gotten a pile of single player IPs as well as the live service experience that ubi have. Hopefully there is something they can salvage from what they were working on. Like story ideas and game assets to then maybe they could use them to quickly fire out a few short single player game or 2. Would fill up some gaps until they get working on their next projects. Would be interesting to see how their live service game was going to work when set in the GOW universe. Hopefully all other live service projects are cancelled other than what bungie are working on.

This has not been a good generation for Sony. Bare-bones remasters (TLoU2 I am looking at you), a new mid generation upgrade with no new game to show its capabilities, closure of talented studios working on projects from Sony's instruction, purchase of studios with a bad reputation and now this. We are now in the 5th year of PS5 and how many 1st party exclusives have we had that has made us go 'Wow'? I can barely tell the difference bwtween PS5 and the best games on PS4 Pro. During the PS3 and PS4 we had so many industry leading games. Now we have this mess and closures of beloved studios such as Japan Studio.

Really I am losing faith in them as a company. Thank God Switch 2 is on the horizon for the core gamer looking for the next gaming experience.

Why don't they just realize THIS market is a huge lottery and it's more a matter of luck or persistence that some service games are successful.
You can't just throw money at it and a famous IP and think it will be a success.

If they would invest all the money they spent on these canceled or disastrous games, we would have another 3 or 4 fantastic AAA games to play and remember. But hey, they just can't leave that part of the market to the competition, right…

Sony (and Microsoft, Ubisoft, Square Enix and the rest) are caught in a culture that promotes ‘bigger is better’. The reality of this is narrative games with all the graphical trimmings are costing too much to make back budgets, so developers looked at live service as a way to make super graphic games where the customers pays non stop with the cost of the base game, subscriptions, dlc, and microtransactions.

The problem is they’re not listening to their customers. The majority of us don’t want live services, and a large portion of that don’t want to play online AT ALL.

So these games companies are going to have to figure out how to reduce costs instead of expecting us paying infinitely for something we have no interest in.

I understand the desire for growth and all, but the simple fact is Sony does first party single player games very well and they should invest more in that. Currently playing Astro Bot and it's such a fun time! Their first party stuff is why I have a PS in the first place and have since the PS1 days! Every game company wants to have the next fortnite, but I think all this proves is that Fortnite is a fairly successful one off thing.

I assumed, and I think nearly all of us did, that Bend and Bluepoint were working on single-player games. To now find out they were actually working on games for this stupidly incompetent live service push that just got cancelled and thus will not produce any meaningful content that we can play for years to come... Words fail me. I am ***** fuming and I want to see heads roll.

No ***** wonder Jim Ryan is gone. Good riddance doesn't even begin to describe my feelings.

Who, in their right ***** mind, would think it was REASONABLE, let alone advisable, to put most of their ***** single-player games making studios on ***** GaaS?

Who, in their right ***** mind, would force their bread and butter studios to do something they are not used to making, when your players are waiting for single-player offerings?

The stupidity and corporate greed is just astonishing.

Destiny 2 has been good for Sony. The line about Bungie is a bit harsh.

Live service is fine when it is done right. People play LS all the time without realising it.

All this was greenlit under Jim Ryan. The Don Mattrick of Playstation

Honestly this just hurts. As a fan and as an artist. I was craving the experiences these studios were cooking up even without knowing what they were. And now the future landscape of first party titles for PS5 has now been diminished again. I doubt either studio will have a game ready for this generation and that breaks my heart.

Jim Ryan pushed for it when he took over and then Herm decided to carry it on, as stated jobs lost, billions lost and yet one retired with probably a golden handshake and a nice pension to fall back on.

The other may end up being ousted or fired or told to walk away with a golden handshake and a pension as well. All while now Bend and Blue Point wonder if jobs cuts are coming their way to steer the ship on course, by the people at the top who sent it into the rocks in the first place

Its why I wonder why Shawn Layden, Andrew House and Jack Tretton left they've had some years at Sony all 3. But I feel this Live Service push was the talk of PS5 all round package before release etc and those guys basically nah sorry I don't want to be a part of it.

@JohntheRaptor No it hasn't they wasted all the money that should have covered the costs for staff and other costs and they promised Sony they wouldn't lay anyone off. Yet they did and they did it again not long after, the DLC expansion didn't sell well considering it was praised to be very good compared to the previous. The Bungie take over has been a financial disaster and Destiny 2 is bleeding players

Live service like Astro Bot, GTA and a small handful of others work well, but in general I detest live service with a passion. Sony lost their way, got lost on the live service path and need to navigate back to what they are good at, and what the majority of players want.

Not even mad at them wanting to do more multiplayer live service type games, they just ***** the bed so ***** bad. There’s a right way and a wrong way to do love service and doing 12 live service games at once, of which included teams that specialize in single player games, is the wrong way.

Microsoft upcoming first party lineup is looking iconic compared to Sony's right about now.

Sometimes you need a Great Flood to cleanse everything and rinse away the crap....I just hope that enough developers made it onto the Ark.

Looking like Microsoft might fill in the gaps making console gaming even more confusing for us.

By next generation it won't be "just buy all consoles" it will be "pick a handheld and console so you can play all games available. Still didn't see Sony dropping the ball with so many games live service or not, yes even some of the single players games have been very lacking (Xbox and Nintendo did too to be fair).

Now we will have studios for PlayStation that might release ZERO games from start of PlayStation 5 to before PlayStation 6 is available. Not even Microsoft will likely fail to do that even if they release next generation consoles first. Truly bizarre times.

the comments here are so incredibly embarrassing.....🤦‍♀️ well my ignore list is getting longer and longer

@soracloud28 This. Corporations and creativity don't play well together, but in the end what you have is some very talented, hard working people who want to create art for other people, having their craft and effort wasted. It's a damn tragedy.

I think in your poll there’s one question you left out and I think a lot of us fall into this group… just not interested!

What about Abandoned? the Blue Box game that never was a game.

@Nem My point was that GAMERS who say they don't want live service games still are the ones playing and spending money in live service games. Then will complain that Sony is chasing live services then be shocked when they actually listen to gamers and cancel those games.

@nessisonett this is more likely due to most of this generation both Sony and MS have been kicking the ball in their own net. MS just seem to be ahead on the score sheet at the minute.

@Fritz167 you mean Hideo Kojimas new game? 😉😂

Problem with that is, if you throw enough **** at the wall eventually you just end up smelling of **** all the time.

Playstation under Helmer Hulst in general has been a total disaster.

The live service thing is something that the regular PS fan could never understand because it only makes business sense. It's understandable that a corporation in the business of making money would try to pursue a piece of the Fortnite pie but going all-in like that was the idiotic part.

I can only hope these two studio had smaller teams working on the next project whilst working on these now cancelled games.
It is such a waste of time and talent.
I wonder if Bend could re use what they have been working on and make Days Gone 2.... one can hope lol

@MikeOrator shhh.... they will hear your idea! 😂

You were the people who kept defending this, saying how this will have no effect on the traditional single player games but I guess it's impossible to predict that 12 live service games being in production will have an effect on single player games right? They had a open opponents goal and still managed to score an own goal instead. Oh but don't worry, they are going to go ahead with the live service vision anyway. Just watch.

No wonder PS5 has been the worst generation of PS.
Prioritizing live service crap over Sony's tried and true single player offerings, leaving classic IPs like Twisted Metal, Killzone and Syphon Filter in the trash can, pouring money into a multiplayer Last of Us that no one wanted, etc.. it's no wonder their output has been abysmal this gen.

Companies need to know their customers / audiences, and cater to what those people want. I have owned PlayStation consoles from the beginning, and the reason I stick with them is because of the great single player experience. Gran Turismo, Final Fantasy, Tekken, the first Horizon game. Sure, these aren’t all PlayStation exclusives, but it’s where they thrive and always have. Live service games feel cheap like mobile games. I guess we should feel lucky that PlayStation bosses didn’t jump onto the NFT bandwagon too.

@Bingoboyop True, and those of us who aren't hyper-partisan Sony fanboys knew it was a bad idea right from the get-go. Push Square and similar outlets deserve some blame, surprise surprise...

It isn't even the fact that Sony went this direction; it's more the fact that Playstation owners were pretty universal in their opposition. "We don't want you to do that" was met with "you don't know what you want " lol.

The way forward is probably going back to single player content. But, maybe every game doesn't need to be open world. Maybe every game doesn't have to have 20 hours of cutscenes. Every game doesn't have to be a movie necessarily. There have to be ways to lower costs.

Sony has mastered the art of Triple A single player games. No doubt. Microsoft has mastered the art of online live gameplay through first person shooters. No doubt. Nintendo laughs at both, drops a Mario game and everyone plays it. My advice, everyone stay in your lane. Do more of what works.

That hall and oats out of touch song is what im thinking about in a crazy way about sony.they not learning theyre lessons.word up son

@Weebleman

What are you supposed to say? Abandoned never had anything to do with Kojima.

Catastrophic to an extreme. And stupid to an equal extreme.

@Fritz167 I know. I was just making a (poor) joke about when everybody was insisting it was Kojima being sneaky.

I mean, after the ***** show that Concord was, seeing all those cancellations could have a positive ending... they will stop pursuing this horrible trend and focus on studios real qualities.

And to think, they could've made Days Gone 2 instead 😭😭

I've been a PlayStation gamer since I bought the original PS1 back in 1995.
This live service obsession is not what the majority of gamers want. Sony need to listen to gamers, and get off the live service bandwagon.

In a time where studios are closing and thousands of workers are being laid off due to costs/budgeting issues, seeing this waste of money and resources is embarrassing and unforgivable. Do any of these CEOs suffer from their poor decisions? Nope! They get raises, bonuses or at the worst, nice send off packages where they can go destroy another company (and thousands of workers lives) with newer, fresher more innovate poor decisions.

This isnt a disaster as is more that its a realization that live service is just not what most Playstation owners want from these amazing studios. Why would I want a God of War live service when the 2 most recent God of Wars are AMAZING single player games? Give me more stories or spin offs with other characters for example. I rather see them shut these down and prevent further loss than push em out and become Concord. This should mean back to the fundamentals and follow that recipe to success.

Thanks, Jim Ryan! What a legacy. So glad you were pushed out before PlayStation was completely destroyed.

Fire Hermen Hulst now

Sony and PS going after GAAS was not a mistake.

Greenlighting 12 of them at once?
Forcing teams known for single player games to develop a multiplayer game with little or no experience?
Entering a saturated mature market with known and huge difficulties in taking on the entrenched favorites?
Erecting barriers to entry such as an up front cost and a PSN requirement?
And being so blind and ignorant of the market that you think blandness and no USP is a plus.

These are where Sony made mistakes...implementation. 9 out of 14 known GAAS games are now dead. Marathon and FairGames both got poor first impressions. Marathon and Project Gummi, both Bungie Games, look set to fail and FairGames isn't promising.

The last is the Horizon multiplayer. Which joins Horizon 3 and Horizon MMO.

Sony needs only 2 to hit big. Maybe eblven just 1. They hobbled HellDivers 2 so these next releases are make or break.

But really...Sony needs GAAS but given its history it would likely be best served cancelling what it has, then doing a thorough examination of the market so it can develop a GAAS game people want to play.

This generation has been so bad that I have entirely lost any faith I had in Sony as a game publication studio. The PS5 will be, without question, the last Sony console I own. I will be gaming exclusively on PC and Nintendo consoles from here on out.

No wonder they charge so much for the PlayStation 5 Pro if they've wasted that much money, just think they could have made days gone 2 by now

This is why Jimbo wasn't a great leader. A majority of his initiatives/plans have been canceled, money burnt away that could've been used for smaller games.

I keep saying it. All bad decisions comeback around.

So many people out here against live service, i’m no fan myself, but meanwhile topping the most played game charts: Fortnite, Cod, GTA.

@DennisReynolds One article was written within the perspective of Marvel Rivals success. The other was written from the perspective of Sony's entire mostly failed enterprise into live service. Two different authors written from two different lenses. There's nuance here and a discussion to be had within the gulf between these two articles that does support pursuing live service in a more focused, limit way despite the failures. And that discussion largely would revolve around focusing on strong IP, working with developers who have experience in this arena, narrowing down prospects to the strongest before investing hundreds of millions, and investing more into market research, among other things. Live service can work. But the recklessly aggressive way Sony went about it was dumb.

It's pretty interesting to see such a widespread rebuke of this news from a website and many of its patrons who spent the better part of this entire generation defending Sony's decision making around projects just like these. How easy the bandwagon can shift paths as long as the echo Chamber is loud enough for people not to have to be brave in times when it's in opposition to widespread ignorance, and truly needed.

If Herman does not lose his job over this in the coming months, it's time we realize this isn't just something that can be blamed on one single figurehead and realize it's likely a much more widespread problem within Sony leadership as a whole. Another tragic example of greed and hubris being prioritized far beyond the wants of the customer base that got them there.

As minority of us have been highlighting this in these comment sections for almost 4 years now, I suspect this is the latter and a much more widespread problem within Sony. And it will only continue if we see the sheeple living in that brand alegiant Echo chamber continue to condone, even praise and buy every price increase, cash grab piece of software and needless or unsupported Hardware gimmick pushed out. Let's be real, without a few decent third party offerings, Sony has done almost nothing the entirety of a generation in pursuit of a live service unicorn with ideas that are frankly just bad.

The sad reality of this is like many have already said is resources and development time wasted and large portions of people's careers serving up nothing in the end. Yet, because they were guided down a path that had no chance of being successful with the ideas they had to go with, and the leadership beating the greed drum to that March, they will likely face the stressor of job insecurity to come regardless of the talent pedestal they once stood upon in gamers eyes.

Ask Rocksteady or Arkane how quicky that sentiment can shift with one bad greed driven scheme....

Just disgusting Sony, truly.

Will Sony be able to recover from this? It’s not just the unfathomable amount of time and money wasted. Their reputation is falling off a cliff. It will take a lot to win back respect of their fans they’ve let down with this mess

@DennisReynolds I think there's a fundamental disconnect - for all people on this site keep saying GaaS is bad, the reality is that's largely what is funding both Sony and Microsoft.... it's just that in Sony's case, it only gets a 30% cut.

I think it makes a lot of sense for Sony to have some decent GasS development going on; but it makes zero sense to be diverting single player studios (who have zero experienece and skills) to make games that will invariably be canned. It also makes zero sense to buy completely new studios (with almost no staff) on the promise that the few experienced devs there might be able to create an entire game. Similarly zero sense to purchase Bungie at such a high price when the company was about to belly-up; and many of the staff would have left once the retention bonuses dried up.

So I think there's plenty of good arguments for live service games - there are almost no arguments for how Sony has pursued them. It's truly confusing for everyone how Sony can be so bad at this; so I don't blame PushSquare for not imagining just how bad Sony can crap-the-bed.

I just read the news about Bluepoint, and my god, how utterly disappointing it is. What a generation… some truly fantastic games mixed with this unprecedented catastrophe of waster time, talent, and money. Thank goodness for my backlog!

I don't think any of the games that were produced as a result of this live-service push have been a success.
Helldivers 2 would have existed without this push but that studio already knew what they were doing well before Sony made the live service pivot.

I wonder if anyone at Xbox is second-guessing decision to exit console wars...

After Activision/Blizzard purchase, Xbox could have challenged Playstation.

But they surrender without a shot, while Sony blew their advantage on Live Service BS.

Thank you for this article. I have no problem with Sony buying studios who are doing live service well or building new studios for live service but I don’t understand why you’d make your star players change direction. And I still don’t get the Bungie purchase.

The point of testing a ton of live service projects at once is making 1 or 2 of them stick, so it's enough to warrant the overwhelming losses from the rest. Well they got Helldivers 2, they got Destiny 2, they got Gran Turismo 7, soon enough Marathon and FairGame$ will have a try, add Concord and that is more than enough games possibly making you long term money even if most fail. Why put more money than that on the endeavor? It never made any sense to pivot its tried & tested studios unto these projects.

at this stage, i do not regret for a moment in not purchasing a ps5. the software library generally hasn't appealled to me and the few notable releases were cross gen on ps4 anyways so i'm good. glad i saved my cash and will likely put it towards a switch 2. having never owned a switch, there will be a plethora of great games available for me on day one. ps5 has been a joke and i will take a wait and see approach on the ps6.

make no mistake, the next 4 years of sony 1st party will be miserable. outside of the ghost of tsushima sequel and intergelactic (reveal didn't impress me), i wouldn't expect much other than santa monica's next game and perhaps 2-3 additional single player games, plus all the live service bullcrap they intend to put out there. this is not MY playstation or why i became a fan back in the 90s. they lost me completely.

but on the bright side, sony's massive failure this gen will make them do better out of obligation next time around. they have no other choice but to go back to what they do best and that will beneift playstation gamers everywhere. for now, playstation is going to just hang on by a thread until this cycle comes to an end. hopefully the next console is due in 3 years instead of 4, if not sooner.

@boarderbro88 In live services? For sure. Trust was lost with concord.
In their usual single player games? They are still making GOTY level stuff. I don't think trust was lost there.

Thank God. Maybe the era of live service games is almost over. Most are just a blight to gaming

No one could have predicted people don't want even more Playstation GaaS games in their lives!
Sony's entire console success since more than 20 years ago was based on Gaa... Oh...

I voted with good since I am happy this all went in smoke 🤣

I would've taken Last of Us multiplayer and the God of War live service, maybe given the Horizon a go.. if they canned the rest from the beginning. Things like Fairgames is simply not what PlayStation fans want!
Bring back SOCOM and even the old Uncharted multiplayer!

Say what you want about Xbox but they always managed to package a great single player campaign (which can also be co-op) with a great multiplayer like Gears and Halo (even Halo Wars). Like Call Of Duty does too to be fair.

Playstation was getting better at that (GoT, TLoU - not co op but you know) but then gave it up for… whatever this is.

@GamerDad66 yea exactly - Playstation has left the goal wide open but Xbox would rather help them score than score themselves.

@KundaliniRising333 agree with everything you said. Sonys decision to chase the fortnite gravy train has backfired tremendously. Its not that live service games are not profitable (fortnite,warframe and genshin impact have proven they are) but they have to actually be good for people to invest both time and money into them. Sony has not published any that are. I think the last successful live service game from Sony was probably warhawk on the ps3 (a game I hated with a passion) and that was free to play so maybe that's why? I recently tried off the grid which shows promise and has some really cool gimmicks with the whole limb swapping mechanic but it's quite rough and crashes a fair bit so it's one I'll revisit if it gets sorted out. This whole live service cashcow is a redundant proposition and I'm hoping Sony have seen this as a wake up call to get back to great games again. Oh I would still love a free to play socom or M.A.G. variant.

At one end of the spectrum: Concord. A bloated, ugly, unloved GaaS cancelled within a 'fortnite' (ahem) (budget $400 million). At the other end: Astro Bot. Charming, single-player platforming, beloved by the gaming world (budget $50-$75 million est.) ***** me Sony, could the message be any clearer?

It was a big mistake. But it’s good that Sony recognizes it.

It’s been a complete disaster, not one silver lining moment at all. They would’ve been better off waiting for “the next big thing” in the live service space, and bought it out. Instead of thinking they’d be the cat’s pajamas at everything they touch because…reasons??

It isn’t over either, we can bet they’re still looking into ways to sink more money into live service BS.

Just make a new Ape Escape, Mark of Kri, or Jak + Daxter game, and start over from scratch. Because the management there have completely lost their mind.

The video games industry:

Doing EVERYTHING except what the customers want.

Let Sony crash and burn.

@Phelaidar Hope: They will see that they've failed and use that failure as a lesson.

Reality: They fail again and it's more disastrous than the previous failure.

Unforgivable is also a nice exaggeration. The fact is that most of us are not waiting for Live service Well, Sony has (finally) realized that now and is continuing with what made them big and first. Done. Nice fodder for social media, but that's the order of the day these days. Just look at the Switch 2. 10 years ago you didn't have all that whining and leaking. Everyone angry on the internet because Nintendo would be too late? No! Just stop releasing those stupid leaks. People believe EVERYTHING on social media these days. When is that worldwide blackout coming? That would be a good reset for 48 hours. Maybe we'll all start thinking again.

@KeenAerondight
This, I think they learned their lesson. Otherwise it's goodbye Playstation, And I know for 100% sure they don't want that. (And neither do I )

Obviously the idiots in charge haven't got a clue. Hopefully lessons have been learnt, stick to what made you great in the first place. Proper single player experiences.

I think we now know why Sony dropped the Playstation Showcases. Any future ones would've been comparable to the May 2023 one where the focus on the new 1st party announcements side of things is live service.

I figure that this year's PS events will mirror the May 2024 State of Play (start with live service, end with a big game) but with some 1st party PS4 remasters added into the mix like Days Gone:

• One early on in the year that starts with Fairgame$ and ends with Ghost of Yotei
• One around May/June that starts with Horizon Online and ends with Death Stranding 2
• One in September that starts with Marathon and ends with Intergalactic

Executive failure at its highest order.

This is the outcome of greed by non-games who have nothing to do with this cash cow. Yeah you make console, yeah you make reasonable adventure games but that is Sony. Stick to what you can do not what you utterly fail at…money doesn’t buy passion, and throwing team after team of jaded employees does not fix thi just waste money.

Meanwhile Sony first party support has been abysmal and we now know why, Sony execs mess up big time this generation.

It's almost like a competition between Sony n Microsoft these days to make bad decisions 🤣😭 this is has got be one of the biggest f ups ever though just by the comments/reactions IV seen on here n get why everyone got who ps over xbox for the big single players games they made then they stopped n went in on multiplayer live service which basically put them in the same position Xbox (Xbox has no games era)was before 😔 although at least you on ps got some 3rd party stuff in the meantime one thing they deffo did right unlike us on Xbox just had no 3rd party or 1st party when Xbox had no games 🤣😭😭

That is so disappointing that Blue Point was making a God of War spin-off. I was really hoping they were doing something with the InFamous universe (because Sucker Punch seems to have abandoned it).
It continues to blow my mind that through all of the superhero craze of the MCU and DC movies Sony did absolutely nothing with InFamous in ten years. I would argue that Infamous 2 and Second Son are some of the best superhero mechanics ever made in a video game. It is so sad they have abandoned this awesome series.

@stu123 even if sony was so lucky to capture lightning in a bottle (better chance at winning the lottery) and carved out its own fortnite-like game, they wouldn't have a clue on how to create a road map and support it long term. the amount of resources and expense required to support such a game long term is staggering, and sony would inevitably drop the ball anyways... if not in the first year of release, by year 2 and surely by year 3. all these big companies chase after the big trands, but haven't got a clue on what it takes to support the monster that they create.

As bad as the first party situation has been to the PS5, as a huge Nintendo fan my whole life I have to say that the Switch has been even worse! Odyssey wasn't great so all that console really got from a AAA perspective is two Zelda games 6+ years apart. Xbox, awful too. Just a really rough era. We were lucky we got BG3.

@TenakaF I agree that Sony can (and likely should) have a live service development stream, and that Sony has seriously made mistake after mistake in how they've sought to do it. The biggest mistake however is to actually degrade it's single player dev studios in the process - not only did they not get anything out of the live service games (whilst HD2 sold well, it's not very well monetized from what I can see), they have stopped development on other income generating SP games. It's like a perfect storm.

@EMQZ Hermen has been running all first party studios since 2019 - the point where most of these live service games were being greenlit and made. AFAIK , the only exception being Factions which was carved out of TLOUp2 well before he took over. You say he's correcting - he's been slapped down, and told by Sony to get his ship in order... after wasting untold millions on zero return ventures; and fundamentally flawed acquisitions like Bungie / FireWalk / Haven. How can you get this far into so many projects and NOT know what is happening? JR may have had the overall corporate strategy, but as the head of all the studios he is the one responsible for both execution and correcting of poor strategy. Now he's got 100% of the responsibility... but I suspect his days at Sony are numbered; and I don't see him seeing PS6 (at least I for one hope not).

Not really a live service fan. If I want a bunch of kids yelling at me while I game, I'll just wait until my grandchildren are over.

I'm starting to feel like the push for live service is just accelerationism for gamers.

We should be getting several excellent single player games this year to finally hit this generations golden age. Instead we are getting next to nothing and this generation may never hit its stride. playstation is set back years by these poor decisions.

In other news, the sky is blue, water is wet, and bears **** in the woods.

Factions could have worked but also the structure was just stupid to make them deal with that management format of updates when they just don't work that way. It's not ND and it's not what Factions 1 was either. What a waste of ND's time by idiot other management. I liked the Uncharted 3 MP story chapters but like Halo 4 Spartan Ops doesn't work in this climate.

Helldivers 2 made sense in execution. Fairgames/Marathon who knows.

Lack of understanding audience/execution. Destruction Allstars fits a Twisted Metal/other car culture, a Wreckfest/Flatout/Destruction Derby older audience not a Fortnite audience with no interest in vehicles. Anybody could tell them that. Lucid wasted their time. Then again Lucid/Playground had Bizarre Creations staff & none of them went hmm Blur didn't do so well let's make that failure mistake again & not understand the market with current generations lack of interest in this sort of thing even if 'different' (even if Blur is a good game). How are these staff not smart enough? (only older audiences watched films or played games like these) in games & change the tone/art to older audiences or even a more cartoony for kids even with a different approach that way, not a Fortnite angle. What idiots. I know & it didn't take me a focus group, online trends to work that out. It's hilarious.

Concord needed to be better handled. Better ideas, better timing of release, better execution, management, anything.

Sony need a better eye for things yet don't. Nintendo as safe as the Mario 35, Tetris/Pacman/F Zero 99 are of lower budget games and well known enough IPs they also do a good job making mechanical and game design structure details to each of those games. F Zero 99 was a good risk too even if I think it could be better the ideas are fair for what has been added to it over time/initial version to the 16bit SENS game.

Tell me how they can do it with lower budget games, remixing them with interesting spins on old games and putting a NES Remix did on Wii U/3DS spin on these, it's called thinking outside the box on how to use resources and structure a game in a new way, something even Disgaea to Phantom Brave or others by NIS do. How are Sony/Microsoft that incompetent.

(not like Switch NES collection but NES Remix style challenges). But PS/Xbox think oh bigger, grander but yet generic gameplay ideas. Logic that one.

Foamstars needed more modes and less time wasted but when Diofield was just as bland I blame Square for being so incompetent as these studios just weren't good enough for either of the games.

They wasted so much money, put teams/talents behind wasted projects. Bluepoint here were basically treated like you have skills good, want to make an original game, good, don't do what your good at and make this. Manpower and wasting it on garbage. Bend as well, they took a whole gen to make Days Gone and their engine for PS4 (which is fine, if it takes that long by all means for them after handheld development). So put them to live service garbage too so they also get nothing out of worth? What a waste of that studio's time honestly. What talent wasted by both of them.

Why not outsourcing honestly?

Who wanted a GOW Ascension/other approach. Using a brand & not understanding what makes it what it is. I love when companies are stupid. TV show/movie it translates, a live service game when it's games about single characters not always new ones to control, their journey. Why a live service for those IPs. Idiots.

Why on Why do a live-service God Of War game? That is absolutely stupid. Can get why Sony wanted to do a Days Gone live-service game, but God Of War? Come on! And another stupid idea is make a SP-focused studio make a live-service title. Hasn't Sony execs learned anything from past attempts? Nope. None of Sp-focused studios ever had a successful live-service title. All were rubbish.
I recall a quote from Farcry 3 "Definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again expecting things to change". That is exactly what execs of game companies are doing.

just the helldivers 2 ongoing success will probably pay for all the faiures and i guess that this was the plan anyway. For 1-2 games from all this that would stick. They were afraid that they will lose all the revenue from COD when they started all this, so it is pretty understadable. With MS going multiplatform now there isnt any reason to push for gaas. Hoping that there is still time to turn the ship before this generation ends.

I said from day one that this was a bad idea. Anything live service is, such a huge risk as not all games even make a success, and they were banking on it all. They could have employed me as an advisor and would have saved them billions. Haha

Great article. If there's a choice worse than simply unforgivable I would choose it. I'm worried more about the devs and studios. We're losing a lot of great talents lately because of stupid decisions from the executives who magically stay in their positions until they're "retired".

Just leave it to indie developers and take your cut. Stick to what you know.