It might not surprise some fans that Sony is backtracking on live service games. While Sony tried to break into live service games in a big way, it hasn’t been incredibly successful. Now, a new report has surfaced online that suggests Concord’s horrible launch failure is still a driving force behind Sony’s second-guessing of the whole live service route.
Before we break into the Concord report, it’s best to catch you up to speed if you haven’t heard the news. Earlier today, we reported that Sony had canceled two more live service titles. Those projects came from Bend Studio and Bluepoint Games. Bend Studio was looking to bring out their next game after Days Gone, and it was reported that Bluepoint Games was working on a spinoff from the God of War franchise.
Both games were killed off, and it’s all due to Concord. Jeff Grubb, a reliable industry insider, has stated that he’s been told that these cancellations were due to Concord. If you recall, Concord was a live service game that Sony dropped and was immediately killed off. A massive amount of money was burned making this game, and players were not interested in this gameplay experience.
Because of this, Jeff noted that Sony is shellshocked right now. They are going through every project and evaluating whether it should continue. It will be especially hard for live service projects to find stable footing under the PlayStation brand umbrella in the future. Of course, as we reported earlier, the company might have ensured enough funds were available at these various first-party studios to work on a live service title and single-player titles.
So, while these games were killed off, they might not be the only projects in the works. It might have been the studio’s main focus, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t something else on the side that could quickly take priority for the various teams.
