90% of PlayStation’s Released Live Service Projects Either Failed Or Were Canceled. Is it time for PlayStation to go back and focus on single-player?

[ethomaz]

Those games resistance, demon souls, bloodborne, spiderman etc are playstation ip

I dont know what youre trying to aim with this ridiculous take

Not developed by PS Studios.

I mean I understand your point and I agree with it for the recent years but you just forget in the past it was the same.
It is a Sony PS Studio output issue that come since PlayStation 1.

It needs to get better... yes... but previous generations was similar to what we have today.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Youre free to play all those shity live service games any time you want

Il stick with single player games like gow ragnarok, baldurs gate 3, final fantasy, spiderman, zelda tears of kingdom, red dead redemption 2, astrobot, black myth wukong, upcoming GTA6 etc

Did that feel good to type?

We're talking about industry strategy/investment and dude wants to tell people which games he likes.

 

[TrishaCat]

And yet, no one actually think the GAAS trend is in any real danger.

I do
And I'm definitely not the only one who thinks that

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I do
And I'm definitely not the only one who thinks that

So basically you're saying "If they're dumb, I'll be dumb too."

That's...dumb.

 

[TrishaCat]

So basically you're saying "If they're dumb, I'll be dumb too."

That's...dumb.

You cannot reasonably expect someone to have multiple forever games that they play and put money into whilst simultaneously expecting them to jump to new ones when the whole point is that they're forever games you invest your time and money into, both of which are finite resources. Additionally, once you've put money into one of these games, you're naturally less hesitant to leave it for something newer because that would be seen as a sunk cost.

 

[Yurinka]

Being serious, this is how their "12 first party IPs with GaaS" initiative is progressing:

1. MLB - Succeeded
2. Gran Turismo - Succeeded
3. Destiny - Succeeded
4. Helldivers – Succeeded
5. Firewall - Failed
6. Concord – Failed
7. Horizon - WIP
8. Marathon - WIP
9. Fairgame$ - WIP
10. New IP From Bend Studio - WIP *
11. "GummyBears" (new IP incubated at Bungie) - WIP *
12. New IP from the new SIE team of ex-Deviation staff - WIP *

They cancelled 3 games, whose slot got replaced by other ones (mostly from Bungie):

• TLOU – Canceled *
• New IP From London Studio – Canceled *
• New IP From Deviation Games – Canceled / rebooted or replaced by the ex-Deviations new IP *

These never entered production, so can't be counted as cancelled:

• Spider-Man: The Great Web – Pitch/prototype not greenlighted
• Twisted Metal – Pitch/prototype not greenlighted
• Payback (Destiny spinoff) – Pitch/prototype not greenlighted

Out of 15 (14 if the ex-Deviation teams is rebooting the Deviation game) projects that entered production, 3 have been cancelled, 6 were released and 6 continue under development. So 4 or the 6 (5 if you don't count VR) released ones succeded.

In all companies games get cancelled and even way more pitches/prototypes don't get greenlighted. The ratio of success as of now is ok / normal. Not specially high or low.

* = I think these are the six games that Totoki said that apparently weren't going to release before their initial (now removed) March 2026 deadline.

90% of PlayStation’s Released Live Service Projects Either Failed Or Were Canceled.​

Fake news.

Will PlayStation rethink their strategy with Games as a Service after the success of Black Myth Wukong, Astro Bot and the absolute failure of Concord?

This would be retarded. Should Nintendo cancel their next Mario and quit from SP games because Dustborn failed and the MP GaaS Deadlock is being very successful?

Of all 14 of 15 GaaS projects greenlit by Jim Ryan, all but a single one has failed.

• Helldivers 2 – Succeeded
• Concord – Failed
• Last of Us 2 Multiplayer – Canceled
• Payback From Bungie – Canceled
• Twisted Metal – Canceled
• New IP From Deviation Games – Canceled
• New IP From London Studio – Canceled
• Spider-Man: The Great Web – Canceled (Only Pitched)

Fake news.

Sony already was working with Helldivers 2, Concord before Jim Ryan, we are not sure about TLOU Online and London Studio IP too (apparently started around 2019).

Payback, Twisted Metal and Spider-Man: The Great Web weren't cancelled because never reached production: they were only pitches/prototypes in very early stages.

Deviation was founded in 2020 and the Sony deal was announced a year later, so pretty likely this was greenlighted by Jim Ryan. Apparently has been cancelled but Sony has a team of ex-Deviations, so maybe the project is being rebooted there.

The list misses the successful Destiny 2 (bought by Ryan), MLB (multiple GaaS greenlighted by him) and Gran Turismo 7 (not greenlighted by him).

PlayStation also have an exclusive dean on Foamstars (currently on life support) and Destructino All Starts (Cancelled).

Destruction All Star was previous to the dozen of GaaS IPs initiative, like the successful first party GaaS Everquest series, DC Universe Online, LBP, PS Home, Gran Turismo Sport to name some of them.

PlayStation also has/had many successful 3rd party (sometimes timed) console exclusive GaaS like Fall Guys, Warframe, Final Fantasy XIV, Rocket League, Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, Tower of Fantasy, ZZZ.

Do you think PlayStation will change it's strategy back to what they are used to, that being High Quality single player games?

No, because Sony's main priority and majority of first party games they release and have under development continue being high quality single player games.

And because they always also made MP games but now are being more successful than ever with them. Plus the majority of userbase is in GaaS, the majority of game revenue comes from GaaS and almost all the most played and top grossing games are GaaS.

To leave GaaS and focus on SP only would be a suicide in the long term, it would be dumb and nonsensical.

 

[TrishaCat]

I don't think its a coincidence that similar is happening in the mobile market where Square Enix can't get a single mobile game to take off outside of Japan and is consequently closing them in rapid succession because mobile gacha games are gaas by design and no one wants that
>but Mihoyo!
Anomalous, not the rule

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

You cannot reasonably expect someone to have multiple forever games that they play and put money into whilst simultaneously expecting them to jump to new ones when the whole point is that they're forever games you invest your time and money into, both of which are finite resources. Additionally, once you've put money into one of these games, you're naturally less hesitant to leave it for something newer because that would be seen as a sunk cost.

The concept you describe here has always existed. You could have typed it out in 2014, just like you can today.

Yet, over the last 10 years, the rise of GAAS has been a phenomenon. People just don't understand what's fueling it because they don't want to understand.

 

[arvfab]

Which recent past?

You know Spider-man 1 was not developed by a PS Studio for example... Insomniac only become PS Studio in 2019.
That includes all R&C prior to 2019.
Resistance games.
Spyro.
Disruptor (man I love this game).

Most AA praised PS games where not PS Studio either... Flower, Flow, Journey, Resogun, Returnal, Dead Nation, Super Stardust, etc.
Most big hits of PS were not PS Studio... it was 3rd-party studios.

Edit.

Demon's Souls, Bloodborne, Death Stranding, etc were not PS Studio either.
Infamous (first game), all Sly Cooper games, Crash, etc where not PS Studio.

My friend, firstly you should pay attention to who you are replying. You continued the conversation with @Airbus like if you were answering to me.

Second:

PS studios production is not the same as PS publishing.

Yes, the games you mentioned were not developed by PS Studios, but they are 1st party (including Death Stranding and you missed Sackboy's Adventure and Destruction All-Stars, for example) therefore are PS Studio productions. Only PS decides about their fate. They could give totally different studios the job for a sequel for example.

The situation is different with games like Stellar Blade and RotR. Those games still belong to their studios/companies, any sequel could skip PlayStation, if they wanted to, so they do not count as PS games.

All of these very fine 3rd party (timed) exclusives are of course a benefit for PS gamers, but in the past they were ADDITIONALLY to the PS Studio games. And PlayStation noticed how volatile these kind of deals are during the PS3 era, were they had to re-evaluate the importance of in-house exclusive games.

 

[Summer Nightmares]

I feel like there is a surge in interest for single player games. Playstation should be leading in that regard. I wish they were focusing on making a few AAA but a nice and consistent output of AA games. And ALL should be totally exclusive.

 

[Dr. E99]

Yes, but that doesn't mean they have to give up on GAAS entirely. It's no secret that AAA development of the type Sony is engaged in isn't sustainable long term. At least, not in the closed PlayStation ecosystem. A well received GAAS game like Helldivers 2 will subsidize their next single player game and beyond.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I feel like there is a surge in interest for single player games. Playstation should be leading in that regard. I wish they were focusing on making a few AAA but a nice and consistent output of AA games. And ALL should be totally exclusive.

Never feel. Feelings get us into trouble all the time.

Look at the overall numbers. GAAS continues to distance itself from single player games. The gap is growing, not shrinking.

 

[Yurinka]

I do
And I'm definitely not the only one who thinks that

GaaS is not a game genre, they are just games designed to have post launch support as long as their performance allows it.

And we don't get any article saying that non-GaaS SP games are doomed when a SP game tanks (as was the case of the recent Dustborn). While we get spammed by "doom & gloom" articles and threads like this one each time a GaaS underperforms.

 

[Summer Nightmares]

Never feel. Feelings get us into trouble all the time.

Look at the overall numbers. GAAS continues to distance itself from single player games. The gap is growing, not shrinking.

Aren't sigle player games selling more than ever? is not a zero sum game, you can have a wider gap but the interest can be bigger too.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Aren't sigle player games selling more than ever? is not a zero sum game, you can have a wider gap but the interest can be bigger too.

I'm not so sure. The top single player games might be selling more than ever but I don't think the single player market has appreciably grown.

 

[Yurinka]

Aren't sigle player games selling more than ever? is not a zero sum game, you can have a wider gap but the interest can be bigger too.

According to Sony and IDG last year PC and console mobile (the majority of the market, mostly GaaS) continues to grow while PC and console (markets where GaaS is dominant but as more more non-GaaS titles than mobile) remain somewhat flat.

Inside console, add-ons (so mostly GaaS) revenue keep growing and eating revenue from game sales (most top sellers are also GaaS). As GaaS, F2P and game subs keep growing on console, game sales decrease:

More recently, this year Sony mentioned that over half of the PSN store revenue comes from the top GaaS titles (maybe only the top 10):

Meaning, GaaS is dominating the market when looking at all platforms, when looking at consoles, or when looking at PS only. And their market share keeps growing at the expense of the non-GaaS games.

But if you look at the Sony SP non-GaaS titles, in most cases the most recent title of each studio (or almost) has been their best selling / fastest selling game ever:

• Japan Studio / Team Asobi: Astro Bot
• Arrowhead: Helldivers 2 (can be played as SP game even if mainly MP)
• MLB: the recent GaaS ones were mentioned to be way more successful than the previous ones, without mentioning details
• Insomniac: Spider-Man 2
• SSM: GoWR
• Bluepoint: GoWR
• Polyphony: GT7 (wasn't clear if the fastest selling of the series, but now also as the extra revenue from GaaS)
• Guerrilla: HFW was selling like their record game HZD until got included in PS+ too early as a test
• Housemarque: Returnal
• ND: TLOU2
• Bend: Days Gone
• Kojipro / Kojima: Death Stranding

So yes, in case of Sony SP own games they are selling better than ever (even more if you also count their late PC port), even if as a whole seems that non-GaaS SP game sales -or at least revenue- is decreasing. The problem is the improvement these SP games got in revenue/sales isn't as big -at all- than the increase in budget they need every generation (+ inflation).

 

[SSfox]

It does even matter?

Most PS exclusives were not PS Studios…
Crash, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, GTA, Tekken, GTA, FF, etc etc etc.

That is how Sony had always 3-4 exclusive per year. PS exclusives for PS5 is spaced very similar to PS4.

Those are attached to Sony yes. But those aren't Sony games, they can lose all those in one night if they fuck off, like it almost happened during ps360 era

All Nintendo has to do is make new console with affordable price that can run all those games well and Sony is in big danger.

You will have all those games on both PS6 and next Nintendo console, You will have a 1000$ PS6 with no exclusives because moron Sony already ported everything to PC, and a 350$ Nintendo console with true exclusives plus those 3rd party. Of course it will not look as good as in ps6, but I'll tell you people won't care specially because of price difference.

Who do you think will sell best ? I let you guess.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

You're all missing the bigger picture here.

GAAS is to AAA what 3D was to 2D.

We experienced a paradigm shift in the early to mid 1990s going from 2D to 3D.

We're experiencing another paradigm shift going from AAA (sp) to GAAS (mp).

This is an evolve or die event. PlayStation, and everyone else, needs to get this right or face extinction. There's quite literally no going backwards.

 

[Kokoloko]

You're all missing the bigger picture here.

GAAS is to AAA what 3D was to 2D.

We experienced a paradigm shift in the early to mid 1990s going from 2D to 3D.

We're experiencing another paradigm shift going from AAA (sp) to GAAS (mp).

This is an evolve or die event. PlayStation, and everyone else, needs to get this right or face extinction. There's quite literally no going backwards.

No its not lol. MP games with added content has been around for ages.
More FUD

 

[Gediminas]

No its not lol. MP games with added content has been around for ages.
More FUD

Idiotism reached new hights, isn't it?