PlayStation will be expanding the meaning of live service games, making games of different genres and sizes.
This revelation came from Herman Hulst, head of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios. Herman was a co-founder of Guerrilla Games, and his upward promotion is part of the companies’ strategy when it comes to their acquisitions.
Herman was being interviewed about their latest acquisitions, two studios who themselves are already dedicated to making live service games to for Sony.
As reported by GamesIndustry.Biz, this is how Herman explains Sony’s ambitions:
“There is a risk that we talk about ‘live service’ in generic terms – as if it is a single genre, or even a single business model. PlayStation Studios are making a variety of games that could be referred to as ‘live services’, targeting different genres, different release schedules, and at different scales. We are also creating games for different audiences, and I take confidence from our track record in creating worlds and stories that PlayStation fans love.”
As we reported last year, Sony had acquired Destiny developer Bungie. More recently, they had also picked up Haven Studios and Firewalk Studios.
Haven Studios was founded by Jade Raymond, one of the main architects of the Assassin’s Creed and Watch Dogs franchises. She had most recently been part of Google Stadia, but after leaving Google, she had founded Haven Studios. Haven Studios is Sony’s first game company based in Canada.
Firewalk Studios is a more complicated story. This game company was built by former employees of Bungie. More importantly, Firewalk Studios was part of ProbablyMonsters, a collective of AAA studios that reveled in its independence.
Firewalk’s game was confirmed to be in development for both PlayStation 5 and PC. While Firewalk and Bungie are technically under the same company again, Firewalk will continue to be independent.
Herman reiterated Sony’s claims from last year that they intend to produce 10 live service games. We had also reported on Jetpack Interactive being rumored to make one of those live service games as well.
We don’t really know what to expect from Jetpack, Firewalk, or Haven at the moment. While it’s interesting to see newer studios jumping in to make games, and that these studios actually have some veterans in the industry, that experience doesn’t always translate to success.
There are intangibles to what makes games and studios successful. With these moves, Sony is pressing reset on what they had planned out from even as recently as five years ago.
Sony certainly isn’t the first company with a desire to expand live service games, but progress in that area has been mixed. Epic very recently shuttered Rumbleverse, and Ubisoft was rumored to close down Roller Champions. Ubisoft ended up denying this rumor, but right now it doesn’t seem that Roller Champions is particularly popular.
In any case, the money in live service games is seemingly big enough that Sony is willing to take that risk, in the same way they have with PlayStation VR.
