Sony 'remains committed' to live service games, will continue to invest in games-as-a-service

Despite Concord's disastrous launch, Sony says it remains strongly committed to live service games.

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Sony isn't ready to give up on live service games any time soon. That certainly hasn't stopped the company from cancelling a number of games, including the anticipated Last of Us multiplayer title, but these cost cuts are a sign of deeper GaaS focus for Sony.

The truth is that Sony wants to deepen its ambition for more live game hits, but in a more targeted and controlled way. Helldivers II's incredible breakout performance has piqued Sony's interest and the company is eager to replicate its success, preferably with a wholly-owned core franchise. PlayStation's corporate heads don't shy away from live games, saying that Sony "remains committed" to games-as-a-service and that more investments in this area are taking place.

At Sony's recent corporate strategy briefing, PlayStation studios head Hermen Hulst outlined how the group is thinking about the new, tighter live service roadmap:

Q: How committed are you to live game services? Are you going to invest as much capital into live game services as you originally planned?

Hermen Hulst, Studio Business Group CEO at Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE):

We remain committed to building a very diverse and resilient live service portfolio. I mean, we have MLB The Show, Destiny 2, Helldivers II, these are all really good examples of the types of titles that we're looking to develop. These titles have already established an enduring set of player experiences and communities across quite a wide range of different genres. Together that provides a really good foundation for our ambitions in this category.

I would say that additionally we are continuing to invest in new live services, with Helldivers II creating such a great example of the level of success we can achieve if we get everything right.

That game has been the true breakout success, it's been attracting and maintaining significance and community and very engaged players since we launched that back in February 2024. It's ongoing success is further evidence of how we deal with monetization, so microtransactions now in that game make up more than half of their revenue.

We're also very excited about Marathon's anticipated launch in this fiscal year.