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Sony announced that it has shut down two unannounced live service projects that include a God of War title. The cancellations form part of Sony’s cautious move away from live service games after they have faced some hurdles in the sector.
Bend Studios and Bluepoint Games have been developing large-scale live-service games, and although both are ambitious, the projects will be postponed. Bluepoint, famous for remasters like Demons Souls and Shadow of Colossus has been working on a God of War live service title for the last two years.
The cancellation of these two titles is just one more step in the string of disappointments for Sony regarding live service. At first, the company had been planning a lineup of live service games, based on the success of games such as Fortnite. However, there are games like Concord, Anthem, and Redfall that demonstrate the issues with maintaining these sorts of games.
It also mentioned that by December 2023, Sony was developing six live service games, and now these two projects are no longer included in their list. The cancellation of the titles comes after the poor performance of Concord which was launched in 2024 only to lack a significant market impact.
The broader industry also encounters issues associated with the live service approach. While games like Fortnite and similar projects have successfully demonstrated what maintaining players’ interest for years means, many live service games were unable to reproduce this experience.
Sony’s decision to cancel these projects comes at a time when other big-budget live service games like Anthem and Redfall are not doing very well. These failures have resulted in most of the developers, including Sony, having to reconsider the longevity and player ownership of live service games.
In the future, Sony will surely remain interested in live service games but possibly with less enthusiasm. The disadvantage of high risks and low sales may mean that the company can pay more attention to the titles it is pursuing and achieve higher long-term generic success.
Although it’s possible to conclude that Sony has given up on live service games since it cancelled multiple projects of this type, the company still plans on having live service games in the future. As a result, Sony is expected to return to the focus of fewer but more attractive projects, and a focus more explicitly on customer satisfaction.
Sony has not limited itself to creating live services, and others, such as Marathon and Fairgames, are still in the pipeline. These canceled titles are a way through which Sony will be able to learn what is likely to happen in the future of the live service gaming strategy. The refined model is used by the company in its attempt to be successful in this highly saturated market.
