PS5 is doomed if it turns its back on single-player – Reader’s Feature

metro.co.uk:

A reader is worried that Sony’s plan to focus on live service games will be a costly mistake and mean less narrative based games for PS5.

So, it’s been a hell of year for games so far, eh? Microsoft bought Activision Blizzard and Sony bought Bungie, while promising they had lots more to buy after that. It’s pretty obvious that by the end of this generation every company of any reasonable size is going to be bought up by Microsoft, Sony, or somebody else.

I hate the thought of that but, unlike lootboxes and NFTs and all the other horrible anti-consumer things that publishers do, there’s nothing an ordinary fan can do about it, unless you want to boycott everyone except indie developers.

As a PlayStation 5 owner, it seems obvious to me that it’s Sony that is on the backfoot, since Microsoft can spend this sort of money without even noticing it’s gone and yet it’s a big deal for Sony – and they didn’t even get exclusivity out of buying Bungie. What worries me more though is why they bought Bungie, and their upcoming focus on live service games instead of single-player.

According to recent reports, Sony wants 10 new live service games by 2026, which is two a year. It’s not exactly clear who’s making them but the implication is that they’re exclusives and/or made by first party studios they already own. Which inevitably means they’re going to be taking time away from making the kind of single-player, story-led game that made the PlayStation 4 such a success.

The only one you can guess at so far is The Last Of Us Part 2 multiplayer game, the thing that should’ve just been part of the main game but which they’ve spun off to sell separately. This at a time when Naughty Dog still doesn’t seem to have a chosen a new main project and is