Image: Bungie
PlayStation maker pumps the brakes to focus on quality, CEO says
Shortly after Sony acquired Destiny developer Bungie, the PlayStation maker announced an ambitious plan to launch “more than 10 live-service games” by the end of Sony’s 2025 fiscal year. A year later, that plan became slightly more clear: Sony wanted 12 live-service games on PlayStation by then.
But according to an update from Sony president, COO, and CFO Hiroki Totoki, the company now plans to have just six online multiplayer games released by the end of Sony’s 2025 fiscal year, which will end on March 31, 2026. The rest will come later, Totoki said during Sony’s earnings presentation Q&A session (via VGC) on Thursday.
Totoki said, in comments translated to English, that Sony still has 12 live-service titles planned, but that the company is currently reviewing them in order “to meet gamers’ expectations” and to ensure that those games “will be played and liked for a long time.”
“Mid to long term, we want to [expand] this kind of service,” Totoki said. “That’s the unchanged policy of our company.” But he stressed that “quality should be most important” when it comes to launching new live-service games.
Sony hasn’t confirmed what all 12 titles are, but we know some of them — and we may also know why some of them have slipped beyond Sony’s FY25 target. Developer Naughty Dog is currently developing a new multiplayer experience set in The Last of Us fiction, but that game needs more time before its ready to be shown, the studio said in May. Sony-owned Bungie is also working on a new Marathon game, but the colorful extraction shooter was reportedly recently delayed to at least 2025. There’s also a new multiplayer game based on Guerrilla Games’ Horizon franchise; an “online co-op combat game set in a fantasy London” from PlayStation’s London Studios; Fairgame$, the “AAA multiplayer experience”/heist game from Jade Raymond’s Haven Studios; and Concord, from Firewalk Studios.
The PlayStation maker is right to be cautious about its live-service game projects. 2023 has been particularly rough for live-service games, with titles like Babylon’s Fall, Crossfire X, Gundam Evolution, Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodhunt, Rumbleverse, and Knockout City being either shuttered or development on them being discontinued. Just recently, Sega also canceled Hyenas, the long-in-development shooter from Total War developer Creative Assembly.
