Sony Knows PlayStation Live-Service Plans “Not Entirely Going Smoothly”, Admits “There Are Still Many Issues”
In confirming what players have known since even well before the Concord debacle, Sony has admitted that their attempt at shifting the PlayStation brand’s development aims away from complete single-player games and towards live-service titles has, to say the least, “not entirely” played out as smoothly as they had initially hoped.
This recognition towards Sony’s self-inflicted video game stumbles was given by Chief Financial Officer Lin Tao during the Q&A portion of the company’s Q1 2025 Earnings Call, as recently held on August 7th.
Therein, Tao was pressed by Goldmach Sachs video game sector analyst Minami Munakata as to how she viewed the “current status” of Sony’s strategy to strengthen their live-service offerings.
“Do you look at the quality before launch and you make a decision and you’re postponing? If so, I think you’re making a flexible decision,” asked Munakta. “I think that’s a good thing. But on the other hand, it’s a negative thing that the title doesn’t appear. So how do you look at the current situation? And in terms of strengthening live service games, where do you see the issues?”
In turn, Tao recalled, “Last year, Concorde and this year, Marathon was postponed. So somewhat negative news has been coming out” before attempting to put a ‘positive spin’ on things by conversely noting, “But if you look at the past five years, five years ago, live service games was almost nonexistent for the PlayStation Studios.”
“We have Helldivers 2, MLB The Show and Gran Turismo 7, and Bungie’s Destiny 2, so we have these four live services contributing to sales and profits in a stable manner,” said the CFO. “For Q1, live service ratio was about 40%. For the full year, it’s a little less, probably between 20% to 30%.”
Closing out her answer, Tao ultimately argued, “So in terms of the transformation, it’s not entirely going smoothly. But from a longer term perspective, if you look at the changes over five years, you see that there has definitely been a change.”
“Of course, we recognize that there are still issues, many issues,” she confessed. “So we should learn the lessons from mistakes and make sure that we introduce live service content where there is less waste and it’s more smooth.”
As previously reported, in 2022, the company announced their intention to launch a total of 12 live service games by the end of their fiscal year 2025. However, this outlook would later be cut down to just six, with related entries in the The Last of Us, Marvel’s Spider-Man and Twisted Metal franchises being among the handful that were given the proverbial axe.
Fast forward to the start of this year, and not only have two of these six games, the hero shooter disaster known as Concord and the ‘Splatoon at home’ Foamstars, already been shut down, but Sony has also already cancelled another pair of in-development live-service titles, including one centered on the God of War universe.
Interestingly, while current Sony and PlayStation leadership dug the live-service hole (and possibly grave, only time will tell) they’re now in, former PlayStation President Shuhei Yoshida knew from the jump that such a move was a bad idea.
“I’m sure they knew it’s risky,” opined Yoshida during a January appearance on the Kinda Funny Gamescast. “The chance of a game being successful in this hugely competitive genre would be small. However, the company, knowing that risk, gave Hermen [Hulst, the current CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment] the resources and chance to try it. I think that’s the way they did it. So, in my mind, that’s great, and hopefully some games will become successful.”
“I hope that this strategy will work in the end,” he added. “If I was in the Hermen’s position, probably I would’ve tried to resist that direction. Maybe that’s one of the reasons they removed me from the first-party!”
