A Sony studio has revealed that they are working on a new live service game for PlayStation.
In a LinkedIn Post, Jetpack Interactive shared this news about job openings:
“We are hiring programmers to join our small & nimble team at JETPACK. We’re excited to embark on a new live services title with Sony – and we’re ready to launch. If you’re an experienced game developer and want to join our team to ship a AAA title, reach out! #jetpackinteractive #gamedev #videogames”
Jetpack Interactive is a studio based in Vancouver, that’s mostly been doing support work for games led by bigger studios.
They cite their work on God Of War 2018 to PC, engineering support for Dark Souls on PC, support work on EA’s NBA Live games. They also made the port of Orcs Must Die! Unchained for the PlayStation 4.
Jetpack also noted that they continue work on the God of War franchise, suggesting (without confirming) that they may already be working on a port of God of War Ragnarok to PC as well.
live service games, are video games designed around the idea of providing continuing support and content for the same game for years, to keep players loyal and playing the same game.
Among the earliest and most famous examples is World of Warcraft, which pioneered the idea of games subscribing to keep playing the game. Today, it’s more common to have free-to-play games that offer new content as microtransactions. Games like Genshin Impact have successfully leveraged this idea to make a very popular and financially lucrative free game.
However, many popular live service games are also fully paid games, and there’s no better example of this than Grand Theft Auto Online. Rockstar had seen great success making new Grand Theft Auto games every few years, each with some DLC but only receiving support for a few years, until they made a new one.
That all changed with Grand Theft Auto Online. While it was sold as a bonus that came with Grand Theft Auto 5, in practice it became Rockstar’s most successful game in their history. With online multiplayer in a broad persistent game world, and a constant flow of new content, Rockstar dramatically changed as a game company to adapt to the needs of maintaining a live service game. Grand Theft Auto Online has now been live for nearly a decade, across three console generations. This is the kind of success video game companies chase with live service games.
Sony currently only has one live service game, MLB The Show 2022. While Sony did buy Bungie earlier this year, they actually do not get the money that Destiny is making. Sony’s ambitions with Bungie lie in making newer live service games with them, and possibly, that Bungie will help other studios, like Jetpack, make other live service games for PlayStation.
Sony had originally announced that they wanted to launch 10 live service games by financial year 2026. They revised that further to be 12 live service games by financial year 2025, for both console and mobile. Clearly with this rumor, Sony is going all in on live service games.
Source: VideoGamesChronicle
