How Live Service Games Are Killing Modern Playstation

While I was walking through Ancient Greece one late night last week, I looked around, and a massive urge of nostalgia shot through me. My hands were gripped to a controller with the sacred symbols: X, O, Triangle, and my personal favorite, the square. A realization of sorts that I haven’t had in a while playing a video game. I was playing God of War (2005) because of the recently shadow dropped, Sons of Sparta. God of War (2005) is full of love, spirit, and it is beautifully handcrafted. You can tell everyone involved, cared. I have always loved PlayStation, but not just the brand; I am fascinated by its history. The history runs deep. To the iconic franchises, Nintendo is the one that is responsible for the PlayStation 1, the bizarre acquisitions and so many studio closures during the PlayStation 5 generation.

On February 19th, I picked up my phone and read a notification with the shocking words “Sony is shutting down Bluepoint Games.” Now, if you’re asking yourself, “Who or what in the hell is a Bluepoint Games?” Let me tell you. Bluepoint Games is a very important studio that PlayStation acquired on September 30th, 2021. Bluepoint Games is most notable for developing the remake of Demon Souls (2020), a PlayStation 5 launch title, which is still one of the best experiences you can have on a PS5. They also developed the remake of Shadow of the Colossus (2018) and helped restore ole Nathan Drake in the Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection. Hell, Bluepoint Games even helped make Titanfall on Xbox 360, one of the best first-person shooters we have had in the past 20 years. Now, if you couldn’t tell by this point, Bluepoint Games is most famous for restoring or remaking old games. They take what is old and bring it forward for modern audiences.

Sony shutting down Bluepoint Games is an interesting decision, especially since the company was acquired by PlayStation in 2021. Bluepoint was most recently working on a God Of War live service game, but it was announced that the project was shutting down last year in January, alongside what Bend Studios was working on as well. Sony has been focused on live service games for the past few years. Live service games are typically games monetized with microtransactions and continuous updates. The model is what Fortnite and Roblox use most famously. Now, I don’t believe there is anything wrong with wanting your own live service games sometimes. A lot of people think PlayStation should not focus on live service games at all. At the end of the day, PlayStation is a business, and it has to make money. Why would PlayStation not want their own Fortnite or Roblox? It would be a continuous flow of unlimited money. I just believe they haven’t been going at it the correct way. They have been trying to do it with multiple projects, including the biggest flop PlayStation probably has ever had, Concord.

Concord was PlayStation’s first real big push toward the live service model, on purpose anyway. Concord was released on August 23rd, 2024, and was met with extremely middling reviews, if that. The game wasn’t bad; it was just uninspired. I spent a lot of time with it, and you could tell that the systems worked. The game was fine, functional, but it was ultimately just dull. I want it to be known that it is a hard feat to develop a game in the first place. It was revealed later on that PlayStation had spent $400 million on Concord. Former Games Journalist, Colin Moriarty, said, “I spoke extensively with someone who worked on Concord, and it’s so much worse than you think. It was internally referred to as “The Future of PlayStation” with Star Wars-like potential, and a dev culture of “toxic positivity” halted any negative feedback.” FireWalk, the studio behind Concord, was closed down that following October.

I bring up Concord because I think it is a massive magnifying glass into the internals of what is going on in PlayStation. It begs the question too: What are you thinking? PlayStation scoops up a developer, puts them on a project for x amount of years then closes them down once things aren’t going their way. Bluepoint’s live service God of War game being shut down was a result of Concord’s failure, of course, but they ultimately met their demise.

PlayStation currently has multiple live service projects in development. Those titles are Bungie’s Marathon, Horizon Hunters Gathering, and Fairgames’ unnamed project internally known as Project Hearts. Bungie’s Marathon will most likely be okay and do fine. It is launching on Xbox and PC as well, and people will show up for it. I am not worried when it comes to Bungie. Project Hearts has been played internally and has received awful feedback, including the director “leaving”. What worries me is Horizon Hunters Gathering. Horizon Hunters Gathering is a multiplayer version of the Horizon series. The Horizon series has you play as a Character Aloy in a post apocalyptic world where you hunt metal Dinosaurs. I could go into greater detail about the franchise, but I think it is irrelevant in this story. What is funny, though, is that this series has always been begging for a multiplayer component in my opinion.

Horizon Hunters Gathering was officially revealed a few weeks ago with gameplay alongside it, and it looks good. I don’t think it looks overwhelmingly amazing or is going to change the industry for the better; it looks fun. The other side of this coin, though, is that no one asked for it. No one also asked for a God of War live service game that Bluepoint was working on. I personally don’t have a problem with every game released nowadays, but a lot of people do. A lot of people work a 9-to-5 and are focused on what they can spend their precious time playing after coming home after a long day. Time is a currency in this market, and I don’t think PlayStation is thinking about that. I am sure they discuss it, but are they really?

PlayStation revealed at TGS that the PS5 generation was the “most successful generation to date”. “We think that PlayStation is not only the hardware, not only the games, but the overall experience.” While I have adored my PlayStation 5, it is hard to believe it is the overall experience anymore. With constant closures resulting in hundreds of people losing their jobs, games never seeing the light of day, it just feels like PlayStation has lost its personality. That is most likely on purpose because that is the direction the company has been headed in for the past few years since the PS5 launch. I really do miss the days when PlayStation cared about the games they were releasing. The company was weird and proud. PlayStation is extremely lucky with how the industry has shaped out. I just hope one day I can go for another walk in Ancient Greece and smile while I press the sacred symbols that mean so much to me.