Sony has now cancelled a confirmed five of their planned live service games.
As shared by Zuby_Tech on Twitter, these are the five confirmed cancelled games:
- Deviation Games Mutiplayer
- Naughty Dog The Last Of Us Part II Factions
- London Studio Fantasy Live Service Multiplayer
- Firesprite Games Twisted Metal Multiplayer
- Firesprite Games Action Shooter
Yesterday, we reported on the live service Twisted Metal game, by Firesprite Games. It seems that this title was still on an early stage of development, and the cancellation happened because it was not coming out well.
That cancellation looks like it could be a huge blow for Sony. While it is good that they have high standards, they did this at a time when interest in the video game franchise was reignited by the ongoing action comedy show Twisted Metal. That show is a co-production of PlayStation Productions and Sony Pictures, and is being produced for NBCUniversal streaming service Peacock.
We know for sure that the cancellation of The Last Of Us Online, which fans had referred to The Last Of Us Part II Factions for a long time. As Naughty Dog had explained, they had gotten far with their development of this title, unlike other cancelled projects. They chose to cancel the game because they decided they did not want to commit to making this game as a live service title, and chose to continue making AAA single player narrative games instead.
Unfortunately for both studios, both Naughty Dog and Firesprite are going to see layoffs, and London Studio itself is shutting down. This unhappy sequence of events seems to be part of Sony’s growing pains, as they are launching their entry to live service games.
Now, as we had pointed out, some of these games had been previously identified. We had also previously reported that Sony originally wanted to bet on 12 live service games, but that had been scaled down to six games.
There is some uncertainty how many of those six remaining games were part of this current list of cancelled games. Sony may have something between three to five remaining live service games in production.
Some PlayStation fans, the ones who are tied to the idea of the company being the AAA single player bedrock, who may be happy that Sony is being forced to cancel these games. But that’s clearly a mistake.
Sony is in the tenuous position they are in now because even their hit games, like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, are not making enough money, not enough to justify their budgets, and not enough to sustain Sony’s overall game business. These live service games were supposed to get Sony out of the hole.
Now, neither we or Sony knows what they are going to do now.
