Sony had a rough track record last year. As one of our contributors Rick Lane pointed out, the company had cancelled eight out of 12 live service games that were originally planned for 2025, including the trainwreck that was Concord—fast-forward to 2026, and it's called curtains on Destiny 2, a game just years prior I would've considered one of the most successful live service games on the market.
You'd be forgiven for thinking that Sony might intend to make less live service games. Forgiven, but also wrong.
That's per a recent Famitsu interview with Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO and president Hideaki Nishino, who told the site (the following quote is machine-translated): "We believe that live service games are content that attracts users on a global level, so we want to continue to revitalize the market through both first-party and third-party content.
"We are not only focusing on promoting new releases, but also considering what we can do with older titles in the medium to long term." Nishino continues, when asked if Sony plans to continue with its live service ambitions: "That's right. With live service games, it's important to continuously provide something. The genre itself is relatively new, and I think many people are trying various things, so we also want to continue to take on challenges within that context."
I'm not so sure about "relatively new", there. Fortnite's battle royale mode came out in 2017, making it almost a decade old. Perhaps youthful in business terms, but with how quickly videogame genres evolve and morph, not all that sprightly.
It's also a little counter to the words of Sony's CFO, Lin Tao, last year, who said that "it's not entirely going smoothly". Mind, the conclusion she reached was that they simply weren't making live service games good enough, commenting: "We should learn the lessons from mistakes and make sure that we introduce live service content where there's less waste and it's more smooth."
She also said Destiny 2 was a sign that live service games were still occasionally winners. Which… has not aged well. Not only has Destiny 2 been wound down, but almost everyone making it is now out of a job.
Still, Sony will continue to bravely send live service games out of the trenches and over the top to be gunned down by an increasingly merciless industry. I'm reminded of those "just one more lane, bro" memes ribbing on American highway systems being prioritised over effective public transportation. Just one more live service game, bro. One more live service game will fix it.
