Earlier in the generation, Sony famously announced plans to release 10 live service titles, as it looked to diversify its first-party offering and create lucrative recurring revenue streams.
But it’s been a year since the disastrous first-person shooter Concord released and was subsequently shuttered, which has prompted the platform holder to make some sweeping changes internally.
In a rare interview with the Financial Times (paywalled), PS Studio boss Hermen Hulst has outlined the changes the manufacturer has made to avoid this problem from repeating.
He’s also hinted that his company is no longer interested in the quantity of live service games it makes – but the quality of a diverse offering instead.
“The number [of live service games] is not so important. What is important to me is having a diverse set of player experiences and a set of communities. We have since put in place much more rigorous and more frequent testing in very many different ways. The advantage of every failure is that people now understand how necessary that [oversight] is.”
The article explains that PlayStation is now doing much more group testing, it’s encouraging intelligence sharing between studios, and it’s fostering a closer relationship between executives.
But the challenge for Sony, and Hulst specifically, is allowing its portfolio of developers to flex their creative talents, while still subscribing to the firm’s overall goal of never-ending growth.
“I don’t want teams to always play it safe, but I would like for us, when we fail, to fail early and cheaply,” he said.
This would perhaps explain the sheer number of cancellations within PS Studios recently; we know projects have been binned at Bluepoint, Bend Studio, and Firesprite – perhaps an admission that it’s best to pull the plug early rather than leave things too late.
It seems, when it comes to new intellectual property, Sony is looking at the bigger picture. It’s no longer enough to deliver a great game – it needs to be something that can also be adapted into anime, film, television, manga, comics, and more.
Hulst explained:
“We take a very intentional approach to IP creation […] understanding how a new concept can turn into an iconic franchise for PlayStation that can then again become a franchise for people beyond gaming.”
While we don’t love everything we’re reading here, we can see what Sony is trying to do.
Many miss the days when PlayStation would put its development budget behind all sorts of weird and wonderful projects, like Vib Ribbon and PAIN. But it’s mostly ceded that space to indie developers these days – although, to be fair, it’s still actively empowering creators around the globe with its Hero Project programmes.
It strikes us that PlayStation’s first-party is now all about building brands that both help sell consoles and feed Sony’s wider strategy of becoming an entertainment juggernaut. It’d certainly help explain its focus on franchises like God of War, Horizon, and even the upcoming Physint – all of which have cross-media potential.
And of course, the live service aspect is still high on its agenda: PlayStation is making the vast amount of its money via microtransactions purchased within a handful of games. It just seems it has more fail safes in place to ensure a flop like Concord never occurs again.
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