Sony Rethinks Live-Service Strategy After Costly Concord Failure

Sony's big experiment with live-service games has run into trouble, and the studio's upper management is finally admitting it. Herman Hulst, head of PlayStation Studios, recently discussed the company's plan following the disastrous failure of Concord, a project that cost hundreds of millions of dollars and damaged PlayStation's hopes for a live-service.

Sony's number of live-service games is no longer the most crucial measure of its success, Hulst said. He instead stated that PlayStation's goal is to create a diverse range of player experiences and communities. In 2022, Sony executives boldly stated that at least ten live-service games would be released by March 2026. This is a significant departure from what they initially stated would happen.

Without a doubt, Concord was supposed to be their turning point. The sci-fi shooter was developed by Firewalk Studios, which Sony acquired in 2021, and was intended to be a major competitor in the live-service market. Instead, it was a costly failure. Reports indicate that the movie incurred expenses of between $250 million and $300 million before its release, and both critics and audiences disliked it.

Now, Hulst sees the loss as a lesson that had to be learned the hard way. What he tried to say was that if Sony fails to make a live-service game work, it should be a relatively inexpensive failure, not something too costly. It's too bad that Concord wasn't a "cheap" failure. The game's failure not only wasted years of work but also hurt PlayStation's image as it attempted to establish a presence in a genre dominated by games like Fortnite, Destiny 2, and Call of Duty: Warzone.

Hulst said that Sony has since initiated much more rigorous and frequent testing across a wide range of methods. To put it another way, ideas will be tested within communities and within the company before they are developed into full-scale productions.

The implications of this are already being felt. There are rumors that Haven Studios' Fairgame$, which was one of Sony's early live-service demos, has shut down because it failed to meet internal goals. Haven's founder, Jade Raymond, has since left the company, which has led to more rumors that the game may be put on hold or completely reworked.

Other projects that were still being worked on, like Bend Studio's Days Gone and Bluepoint Games' remakes like Demon's Souls Online, were rumored to have been slowed down or canceled. Hulst says that all of this is part of a larger plan to ensure that PlayStation only invests in ideas that can truly become long-lasting franchises, rather than just one-off trials.

Sony isn't giving up on its larger goals, despite the live-service experiencing some issues. Hulst discussed PlayStation's deliberate approach to IP creation. He said that the company believes new brands could extend beyond games into movies, TV shows, and merchandise.

If Concord had performed well, it would have been quickly turned into a multimedia product, similar to what Sony did with The Last of Us on HBO and the Uncharted movie. Instead, its loss highlighted the dangers of relying too heavily on unproven ideas.

Sony's change of direction doesn't mean that PlayStation systems will no longer have live-service games. Helldivers 2 and other games like it have shown that multiplayer can still be successful if it's done right. But it looks like the time when too many half-baked projects were thrown on the market is over.