Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida reveals he would have resisted Sony's controversial push into live-service gaming. Yoshida, who led SIE Worldwide Studios from 2008 to 2019, expressed concerns to Kinda Funny Games about the inherent risks Sony acknowledged in this investment.
This statement comes amidst significant challenges for PlayStation's live-service titles. While Helldivers 2 achieved remarkable success, becoming the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game ever with 12 million copies sold in just 12 weeks, other ventures have faltered.
Concord, a notable example, became one of PlayStation's biggest failures, shutting down after a few weeks due to extremely low player counts. This resulted in substantial financial losses for Sony; Kotaku reported an initial development investment of approximately $200 million, a sum insufficient to cover the entire development and excluding IP rights and studio acquisition costs.
This failure followed the cancellation of Naughty Dog's The Last of Us multiplayer project and, more recently, two unannounced live-service games—a God of War title from Bluepoint and another from Bend Studio (Days Gone developers).
Yoshida, departing Sony after 31 years, stated in his Kinda Funny Games interview that, were he in Hermen Hulst's current position, he would have resisted the live-service push. He highlighted the resource allocation dilemma: diverting funds from established single-player franchises like God of War to potentially risky live-service ventures. He acknowledged Sony's increased resource allocation post-his departure, enabling parallel development of both single-player and live-service games. He emphasized the inherent risk and unpredictable nature of success in this competitive market, citing Helldivers 2's unexpected triumph.
Sony's financial call featured comments from Hiroki Totoki (president, COO, and CFO) acknowledging lessons learned from both Helldivers 2's success and Concord's failure. Totoki emphasized the need for earlier user testing and internal evaluations to identify and address issues before launch. He also pointed to Sony's "siloed organization" and Concord's release window (close to Black Myth: Wukong) as contributing factors to its failure.
Sadahiko Hayakawa (senior vice president for finance and IR) further highlighted the contrasting outcomes of Helldivers 2 and Concord, emphasizing the importance of sharing lessons learned across studios to improve development and post-launch content management. Sony plans to balance its portfolio with both single-player titles (leveraging established IPs) and live-service games, acknowledging the inherent risks of the latter.
Several PlayStation live-service games remain in development, including Bungie's Marathon, Guerrilla's Horizon Online, and Haven Studio's Fairgame$.
