Bend Studio, the developer behind Days Gone, remains committed to creating exciting new projects despite Sony's cancellation of their unannounced live-service game. This follows Sony's recent decision to scrap two unannounced live-service titles, one from Bend Studio and another from Bluepoint Games (reportedly a God of War live-service title). While Sony confirmed the cancellations, assuring that neither studio would be closed, the move highlights the company's struggles in the live-service market.
While Helldivers 2, developed by Arrowhead, achieved phenomenal success, selling 12 million copies in just 12 weeks, other Sony live-service ventures have faltered. The notable failure of Concord, a game quickly shut down due to low player numbers, exemplifies these challenges. This follows the earlier cancellation of Naughty Dog's The Last of Us multiplayer project. Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida even commented that he would have resisted Sony's aggressive push into live-service games.
Bend Studio's community manager, Kevin McAllister, reassured fans with a tweet: "Thanks for the love and support everyone, especially to those that have reached out. P.S. We still plan on creating cool shit." Their last release, Days Gone, launched in 2019 on PS4 and 2021 on PC.
Sony's financial call shed light on the lessons learned from both Helldivers 2's triumph and Concord's failure. Hiroki Totoki, Sony's president, COO, and CFO, emphasized the need for earlier user testing and internal evaluations to identify and address potential issues before release. He also cited Sony's "siloed organization" and Concord's unfortunate release window, potentially causing market cannibalization with Black Myth: Wukong, as contributing factors.
Sadahiko Hayakawa, Sony's senior vice president for finance and IR, further underscored the importance of learning from both successes and failures, emphasizing the sharing of these lessons across studios to improve development management and post-launch content updates. Sony plans to balance its portfolio with its established strength in single-player titles alongside calculated risks in the live-service sector.
Despite the setbacks, several PlayStation live-service games are still in development, including Bungie's Marathon, Guerrilla's Horizon Online, and Haven Studio's Fairgame$.
