Sony continues to scale back its live service pipeline by canceling two games from Bend and Bluepoint

God of War Ragnarök

What happened?

• Sony Interactive Entertainment canceled two unannounced Games-as-a-Service (GaaS) projects from Bend Studio and Bluepoint Games, Bloomberg reported on January 16.
• The company confirmed the information, stating that the decision was made “following a recent review.” In an internal memo, PlayStation also said it is now “working closely with Bend and Bluepoint to determine what are the next projects and plan to do everything we can to ensure there is minimal business impact.”
• It is unclear what those cancelled projects were, but Jason Schreier revealed that Bluepoint was working on a “live service God of War game.” It was previously reported that Bend had an open-world title based on a new IP in development (likely with multiplayer features), but details remain under wraps.
• Despite the cancellations, Sony still plans to continue making both single-player and live service games.

PlayStation’s live service pipeline is shrinking

The Japanese company started heavily investing in the GaaS area in 2022, shortly after its $3.6 billion Bungie acquisition. Sony planned to planned to increase the share of investment in live services to 60% compared to traditional games during the current fiscal year ending March 31, 2025.

The original goal was to release 12 live service titles by March 2026, with then-SIE chief Jim Ryan calling it an “untapped opportunity” for PlayStation. The pipeline included games based on its existing franchises and new IPs. However, the ambitious plan was later scaled back from 12 to six projects following a series of negative internal reviews from Bungie and the cancellation of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us multiplayer game. Sony has since scrapped several other projects, including a live service Spider-Man game.

Last year, PlayStation released hero shooter Concord, which turned out to be a commercial flop and led to the company pulling the game from sale just two weeks after launch and then closing its developer Firewalk Studios. The company didn’t disclose how much money it lost on the project, but one of the reports estimtaed the initial development deal for Concord at just over $200 million (not including the acquisition of the studio and IP rights).

Despite a series of failures and harsh decisions, PlayStation has no plans to withdraw its bet on GaaS projects. The list of games still in development includes Bungie’s extraction shooter Marathon, Haven’s heist shooter Fairgame$, and an MMO title based on the Horizon IP.

Ironically, Sony’s only unconditional success in this area is Helldivers 2, which was developed by third-party studio Arrowhead. It sold 12 million copies across PS5 and PC in just 12 weeks, becoming the fastest-selling game published by PlayStation (the previous record was held by God of War Ragnarök, with 11 million units sold in three months). As of November 2024, Helldivers 2 had 15 million unique players globally.