Bend Studio, the developer behind Days Gone, assures fans they'll continue creating exciting new projects despite Sony's cancellation of their unannounced live-service game. This follows Sony's recent cancellation of two unannounced live-service titles, one reportedly a God of War game from Bluepoint Games. While neither studio is closing, Sony's live-service strategy has faced significant challenges.
Sony's Concord, a live-service game, proved a major setback, shutting down after a short period due to low player numbers. This followed the cancellation of Naughty Dog's The Last of Us multiplayer project. Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida even voiced his reservations about Sony's aggressive push into the live-service market.
Bend Studio's community manager, Kevin McAllister, tweeted a reassuring message to fans, stating their commitment to future projects. Their last release was Days Gone in 2019 (PC release in 2021).
Sony's financial call revealed lessons learned from both the success of Helldivers 2 (a record-breaking PlayStation Studios title) and the failure of Concord. Sony's president, COO, and CFO, Hiroki Totoki, highlighted the need for earlier user testing and internal evaluations, suggesting that Concord's issues should have been addressed much sooner. He also cited Sony's "siloed organization" and Concord's unfortunate launch window (close to Black Myth: Wukong) as contributing factors.
Sony's senior vice president for finance and IR, Sadahiko Hayakawa, emphasized the valuable lessons learned from both Helldivers 2 and Concord, planning to share this knowledge across their studios to improve development management and post-launch support for future live-service titles. Sony intends to balance its portfolio with single-player games (leveraging established IPs) and live-service games, acknowledging the inherent risks involved in the latter.
Despite these setbacks, several PlayStation live-service games are still under development, including Bungie's Marathon, Guerrilla's Horizon Online, and Haven Studio's Fairgame$.
