For a long time, live service was seen as the melody of the future, a sure cash cow and a well of seemingly inexhaustible potential and player base. Something that Sony and PlayStation obviously wanted to take part in and a few years ago proudly presented as ‘the way forward’ and something that the internal developers would invest heavily in in the future.
The situation today is of course markedly different and the GAAS market has become oversaturated. This is clearly evident if we look at the many projects that PlayStation has had in the oven, and more than half of them have either flopped or been scrapped. Billions of dollars down the drain.
Here’s the full list based on what we know, and the respective status of the games.
- MLB The Show – Successful
- Helldivers 2 – Successful
- Foamstars – Failure
- Destruction All-Stars – Failure
- Concord – Failure
- The Last of Us Factions – Scrapped
- Payback from Bungie – Scrapped
- Twisted Metal – Scrapped
- New IP from Deviation Games – Scrapped
- New IP from London Studio – Scrapped
- Spider-Man: The Great Web – Scrapped
- Marathon – Under development
- Fairgame$ – Under development
- New IP från Bend Studio – Under development
- Horizon multiplayer – Under development
- Horizon MMO – Under development
In short, out of a total of 16 projects, nine of them have either been scrapped prematurely or failed. News from recent weeks also seems to suggest that Marathon’s future is in jeopardy. Regarding Fairgame$, there are some better signs, but the development is led by Jade Raymond, not exactly an individual known for her know-how in the GAAS genre.
Sources (Reddit), (Forbes), (Tech4Gamers)