Despite a raft of high-profile flops and cancellations, Sony Interactive Entertainment president Hideaki Nishino has reaffirmed the company’s commitment to live-service games.
In an interview with Famitsu, president Hideaki Nishino stressed that the firm still believes that live-service games “attract users on a global level”, which is why it “want[s] to continue to revitalise the market through both first-party and third-party content”.
“With live service games, it’s important to continuously provide something,” Nishino added (thanks, wccftech).
“The genre itself is relatively new, and I think many people are trying various things, so we also want to continue to take on challenges within that context.”
He added: “We are not only focusing on promoting new releases, but also considering what we can do with older titles in the medium to long term. Also, this year we are planning to release our own live service title, Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, and we hope everyone will enjoy it.”
Back in 2022, former Sony exec Jim Ryan believed the future of gaming lay very much in live service games, insisting that subscription services won’t reach the levels seen in other media. It was around the same time we learned PlayStation planned to launch more than 10 live service games before March 2026.
Numerous live service games have been cancelled in that time, of course, many before we ever got to see what they might have been. London Studio’s co-op game was cancelled and the studio shuttered in 2024. In 2023, Naughty Dog cancelled a standalone multiplayer game set in the world of The Last of Us. A live service Twisted Metal project at Firespite was also cancelled in 2024. Footage of a cancelled co-operative live service Spider-Man game from developer Insomniac – titled Spider-Man: The Great Web – also appeared online a few years ago alongside rumours of its untimely death before the public ever got to see it. Sony didn’t even want to remind us about Horizon: Hunters Gathering.
And then there’s Concord, which was infamously pulled from sale just two weeks after its PS5 and PC release, amid suggestions it had sold less than 25,000 copies. At the time, Sony said the game would remain offline indefinitely so Firewalk could “determine the best path ahead” and “explore options, including those that will better reach our players.” Later that same month, though, Concord game director Ryan Ellis stepped down, and by the end of October 2024, Firewalk Studios, the Sony-owned developer behind the ill-fated shooter, was also shut down.
Nishino’s words come as Bungie’s studio head Justin Truman stepped down earlier this week as at least 292 staff were put at risk of redundancy. The extent of the cuts was laid bare via a WARN notice in Washington state, which details the number of impacted employees from that state.
Over the weekend, we reported that Sony has written to PlayStation customers to advise that hundreds of “previously purchased” digital movies previously available on its online store will “be removed” from video libraries later this year because of “content licensing arrangements”.