Sony PlayStation Live Service Reaction
Image: Push Square

Live service. The two words that every PlayStation fan seems to pop a blood vessel over. And you know what? That kind of visceral reaction now seems justified.

Under former CEO Jim Ryan's leadership, PlayStation had announced its intent to blitz the live service market — to create PS5 mega hits that would rake in unprecedented dough. To be fair, everyone wants a piece of this pie — but Sony saw fit to go all-in.

This was despite strong criticism from hardcore fans — those who had seen the company dominate the previous console generation through the production of unstoppable single-player blockbusters. But with modern, AAA development cycles being so colossal, there was simply no turning the ship around.

Except that's exactly what Sony is in the process of doing as we write this article. In case you haven't seen the news, the company has just cancelled two live service projects from Bluepoint (the team behind the Shadow of the Colossus and Demon's Souls remakes) and Bend Studio (the developer of Days Gone).

We knew next to nothing about these projects — Bluepoint was actually making a live service God of War title, if you can believe it — but the mismanagement of Sony's first-party PlayStation Studios is really starting to hit home.

The Last of Us Multiplayer

With the news of these cancellations, we now have confirmation that Sony had all but bet the farm on its aforementioned live service push. Make no mistake: a staggering amount of resources will have been poured into these projects — and the same goes for Naughty Dog's cancelled The Last of Us multiplayer title.

But Naughty Dog is a big enough studio to support two ongoing projects — and so we have Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, a cinematic, single-player adventure to fall back on. Bluepoint and Bend Studio, though? That's god-knows-how-many years down the drain. All that effort chasing the live service dream for the sake of absolutely nothing.

And that's when you start to add it all up. The $3.6 billion buyout of Bungie — a developer that couldn't even buy a positive headline if it tried. The now completely forgotten warning sign that was Destruction AllStars. The utterly mind-blowing Concord saga, in which the live service shooter's life support machine was unplugged just two weeks after it launched.

Oh, and let's not forget about the reportedly troubled Marathon (Bungie), the long-rumoured Horizon live service thing, and Fairgame$. Yeah, it's not looking great for those projects right now, is it? Not when Sony's out here ditching a live service God of War game.

Fairgame$

At this point, we probably couldn't even comprehend the amount of money that Sony has sunk into this doomed direction. So many talented developers will have toiled away on these projects for thousands upon thousands of hours; the live service illusion — or what little was left of it — has been well and truly shattered.

So in what state is PlayStation right now? Well, internally, it can't be pretty. You can't have all of these teams working on AAA-budget projects, realise that you're marching straight towards potential catastrophe, hit the reset button, and expect everything to just even out.

Sony will know this, of course — but the damage has been done, and PlayStation will feel the kickback of what has ultimately been a bafflingly misguided crusade towards the live service space. If there's any silver lining here, it's that PlayStation has decided to actually cut its (presumably gigantic) losses and revaluate its business.

Helldivers 2 is the exception — it's certainly not the rule, and Sony has learned that the hard way, having now spent the best part of an entire console generation pissing away time, money, and effort on chasing down a delusional dream.


What do you make of all this? What do you think is next for Sony? Feel free to simply shake your head in the comments section below.

How would you describe Sony's live service push this generation? (4,028 votes)

  1. Simply unforgivable62%
  2. Bad34%
  3. Just okay2%
  4. Good, actually1%