Jeff Gerstmann has shared an interesting insight into the rumored closed game by Bluepoint Games.
We reported on Sony’s announcement that they closed two more live service games they had in development, by Bend Studio and Bluepoint Games respectively. While Sony did not confirm this, the rumor that had gone around was that Bluepoint’s live service project was for the God of War franchise.
In episode 137 of The Jeff Gerstmann show, he revealed that he was told that Bluepoint was working on a God of War multiplayer title, but he was not told that it was a live service game. The impression that he got at the time was that it was actually going to be more like the multiplayer found in God of War Ascension.
Gerstmann also clarified he heard this rumor a long time before Jim Ryan announced Sony would be getting into live service games. He assumed that it had been cancelled much earlier, so it was surprising for him to hear this news.
Some people think Sony debunked Gerstmann’s rumor, but that would be a misreading of what he said. There are several possibilities on how his claim could be related to the other rumor:
- Bluepoint was working on two multiplayer God of War games, one of them was live service
- Bluepoint was originally working on a God of War multiplayer game that was like God of War Ascension, and was later remolded into a live service game
- Bluepoint was making a God of War multiplayer game that was different from the live service game, and that rumor that came up after Sony’s announcement was fake
Since we’re dealing with rumors, we don’t know which of these could be the case at all. But we know that Bluepoint was redirected from being Sony’s dedicated port and remaster studio, towards making their own new original games.
Last year they shared assurances that their original title was in development. In fact, they may have a few such games in the works, but in various states of advancement. Because of how hype cycles for games work, Bluepoint is unlikely to announce or reveal their game or games unless they’re sure that they’re going to finish them. And its 98 % likely they’ll only reveal it months before they are about to release.
But this is certainly something to take in. Whether it was the live service game or not, apparently we could have gotten a God of War Ascension 2, but it’s no longer happening. It sounds very much like The Last Of Us Online, and Insomniac’s Spider-Verse game, to have been a project that fans could have wanted.
We don’t know if development on those titles did have red flags indicating it wouldn’t meet expectations, but they each had a clearer appeal to them than Concord did. It certainly makes you wonder how Sony is making these decisions for their slate of titles, and what that means for the PlayStation 5’s last years in the market.
