Sony started doing 'stupid sh*t' when Jim Ryan took over as PlayStation CEO, analyst says

Securities analyst Michael Pachter criticizes Sony's move towards live services and blames Jim Ryan for a lot of PlayStation's problems, especially Concord's historic failure.

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Since 2019, I noticed a big trend in PlayStation's earnings: add-on content made more money than anything else. Free-to-play games were (and still are) making billions of dollars a year. Sony knew this, and decided to use its COVID-19 earnings overage surplus to fund its own first-party live service games. Sony initially wanted to release a whopping 12 live games by March 2026. When Concord failed and was yanked off the market, Sony scrapped the plan and significantly reduced the lineup due to improper execution, the worldwide economic market, industry trends, etc.

Analyst Michael Pachter says this dismal failure is key evidence that Sony are "bad managers" for live games, and that they "don't know what they're doing." Sony bought Bungie for $3.6 billion to help lead their live service initiative, but Concord passed Bungie's "rigorous" vetting process and Bungie themselves had to recently delay their own live game Marathon due to quality concerns.

• Read more: Sony hasn't cancelled Fairgames live service shooter despite reports
• Read more: Live games are like 'a mirage on the top of a sand dune,' former PlayStation boss says
• Read more: PlayStation boss on Concord, live games: 'We want to fail early, and fail cheaply'

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Sony originally wanted to release 12 live games by the end of FY25, which end March 2026.

It hasn't been all bad news for Sony's live games: Helldivers 2 remains one of the most popular titles that Sony helped produce with over 12 million copies sold, and it's one of the initial first-party live games crossing over to Xbox after first releasing on PlayStation.

Here's what Pachter said in the latest episode of Pachter Factor:

"I think the biggest mistake that Sony has recently made was getting rid of [former PlayStation CEO] Andrew House, and then getting rid of [PlayStation Worldwide Studios boss] Shawn Layden. Andy was an oddball but a very competent leader, and Shawn Layden was great.

"They replaced Shawn with Herman Hulst, who was really good, but then pushed him aside. They got rid of Shu[hei] Yoshida, who was really good. They put Jim Ryan in charge, who was really bad, but they are not thinking the way the old Sony entrepreneurial guys were thinking.

"[Ken] Kutaragi had Kaz Hirai, who was a Japanese-American; he went to school here, and he thought like an American, very Western. They always had a Western PlayStation leader, being Andy House, Jack Tretton, Shawn Layden, etc.

"They started doing stupid sh*t when Jim took over, and the stupid sh*t was 'oh, everybody makes all this money in live services, we need to do live services.'

"Some of the guys that do live services are very successful, and Sony looked at that and went, 'we need some of that sh*t'. Except they bought Bungie to do it.

"Bungie made Halo, they're obviously very talented, and Destiny, which was good and had ongoing in-game spend. But Sony paid $3.6 billion for it, and they didn't buy a mobile publisher like Scopely for $4.9 billion, who has $3 to $3.5 billion in revenue.

"Bungie has $300 million in revenue, which is dumb.

"They didn't buy Niantic, which has $1.5 billion revenue. They didn't buy people who know how to make live service games, and then they turn all their console developers into live service developers which resulted in Concord being shut down and the studio being shut down.

"This resulted in Jade Raymond in being let go, and her game [Fairgame$] getting cancelled.

"Sony are bad managers, they don't know what they're doing.

"They should do what they're good at and they should buy what they're not good at. To buy what you're not good at means you don't buy Bungie, because Bungie makes console games. Sony's good at that. Buy King, buy Zynga, buy Supercell, Peak Games--buy somebody who knows how to make live service, free-to-play games.

"I think Sony has lost its way."