PlayStation’s live service cancellations might be the lesser of two evils

digitaltrends.com:

Despite its best efforts, PlayStation’s live-service strategy hasn’t borne the fruits it has hoped for thus far.

The company’s initial plan was to charge head-first into the market with 12 games planned to be released within just a few years after making its biggest purchase in Bungie to help guide that effort. Ever since that declaration, PlayStation has been scaling back its grand plans piece by piece, with the latest news coming from Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier revealing that two unannounced live-service projects in development and Bluepoint and Sony Bend have been canceled. We don’t know what the repercussions of this will be in terms of layoffs, but a spokesperson did confirm that neither studio would close down.

There’s no doubt PlayStation’s new leadership team took a much harder look at its live-service strategy after the unmitigated disaster that wasConcord. It isn’t going to abandon this effort in full, but I believe that we’re seeing signs that it is ready to make painful choices now for the long-term health of its brand and studios. Only time will tell if they end up being the correct ones.

• PlayStation had a better 2024 than it should have. Now it needs to focus
• Your PlayStation Portal is about to get a much-requested feature
• Oh hey, GTA 5 is back on PlayStation Plus this month

Pick your shots

A game cancellation is hardly ever good news. Video games are works of art, passion, and selfless dedication from teams large and small that all make major sacrifices to bring to life. It would be ignorant of the developer’s time and effort to celebrate a game’s cancellation for any reason, least of all because it isn’t something we personally wanted. Based on Schreier’s report, Bluepoint and Sony Bend each spent years on these projects and will now have to start from scratch on new developments with nothing to show for that time.

It feels as though PlayStation sees that as the lesser of two evils. It has seen just how catastrophic a