Sony Interactive Entertainment’s live service ventures didn’t go as planned, resulting in the sentiment that the pivot was ultimately a misdirection.
Back in 2022, Jim Ryan, president of Sony Interactive Entertainment at the time, had announced during an earnings call that the company planned to have 12 live service games up and running in 2025. We now know that 8 of those titles have been canceled, indicating a failure of the publisher’s live service push.
List Of Sony First Party Live Service Games
Going by information gathered from official announcements as well as leaks, we are now able to identify each of the aforementioned 12 live service game former Sony Interactive Entertainment president Jim Ryan had referred to in 2022.
- Naughty Dog: The Last of Us Factions (canceled in 2023)
- Insomniac: Spider-Man: The Great Web (canceled sometime before 2024)
- Arrowhead Game Studios: Helldivers 2 (released in February, 2024)
- Firesprite: Twisted Metal GAAS title (canceled in 2024)
- London Studio: Unannounced fantasy multiplayer game (canceled in 2024 alongside studio closure)
- Firewalk Studios: Concord (released and canceled in September, 2024)
- Bungie: Payback (canceled in 2024)
- Bend Studio: Unannounced GAAS title (canceled in 2025)
- Bluepoint Games: God of War GAAS (canceled in 2025)
- Bungie: Marathon (in active development, launch in 2025)
- Guerilla Games: Horizon Online game (in active development, launch window TBD)
- Haven Studios: Fairgames$ (in active development, launch window TBD)
Out of the 4 live service titles that haven’t been canceled, Arrowhead Game Studios’ Helldivers 2 has proven to be very successful. The developer had recently revealed that the game now has over 15 million players worldwide, marking an increase of 3 million players since May, 2024, when it was reported to have 12 million players.
The other 3 titles are currently in development and have yet to prove themselves. Bungie’s Marathon and Haven Studios’ Fairgames have both been undergoing internal playtests. Meanwhile, not much is known about Guerrilla Games’ online Horizon project.
A consumer survey conducted during Q2 2023 had revealed that a majority of gaming audiences find single-player titles and not live-service games their preferred way of playing. Read about it here.
