Hermen Hulst: How Many Live Service Games Sony Has “Is Not Important”

PlayStation Studios head Hermen Hulst has talked to the public about the current trajectory for their push for live service games.

12 Is Just A Number

He said this in a recent interview:

The number [of live service games] is not so important. What is important to me is having a diverse set of player experiences and a set of communities.

We have since put in place much more rigorous and more frequent testing in very many different ways. The advantage of every failure is that people now understand how necessary that [oversight] is.

What Happened To Sony’s Live Service Games?

Sony once had 12 live service games in active development.

Sony did not announce some of these games. We have been dependent on rumors to confirm them for now.

We’ll run down each live service game as we know them below.

• Helldivers 2 is Sony’s biggest success in their push for live service games so far. It has sold 15 million units as of November 2024.
• MLB The Show often goes under the radar in this discussion. A former Sony employee claimed the franchise makes $ 100 million annually in their LinkedIn.
• Sony shut down Concord in a record two weeks.
• Fairgame$ is still in development. Jade Raymond left the studio making it after it failed an external test.
• Marathon is in an even worse position than Fairgame$ because of a huge plagiarism scandal.
• Guerrilla Games is making a live service game for the Horizon franchise.
• Bluepoint Games was rumored to be making a live service God of War game that was cancelled.
• Naughty Dog was making The Last Of Us Online, but chose not to go forward with it to keep making single player games instead.
• Bend Studio was making a live service game that has reportedly been cancelled.
• Deviation Games was making an original game for PlayStation, when it was closed. It’s rumored that this was a live service game.
• FireSprite was rumored to be working on a live service Twisted Metal game but it has also been cancelled.
• London Studio was reportedly working on an original live service game before it was closed.
• A cancelled Insomniac live service game called Spider-Man: The Great Web leaked, showing a promising title that the public would have otherwise not known existed.

Where Does Sony Go From Here?

Hulst has consistently reiterated Sony’s commitment to live service games after they shut down Concord.

If there’s a positive to take from this, it’s that Sony isn’t prodding all their studios to do live service games anymore. Naughty Dog, Insomniac, Sucker Punch Productions, Santa Monica Studio, etc. will get to make the games they want. Hopefully it’s also games that gamers will love.