Sony Plans to Launch Over 10 Live Service Games by 2026 - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 February 2022 / 4,804 Views
Sony Interactive Entertainment earlier today released its financial results for the quarter ending December 31, 2021. In the same week, Sony announced it is acquiring Destiny developer, Bungie, for $3.6 billion.
Bungie will remain "an independent subsidiary" of Sony Interactive Entertainment once the deal closes and it will remain a multiplatform studio and will have an option "to self-publish and reach players wherever they choose to play."
Sony in its earnings report did reveal that working closely with Bungie, PlayStation Studios plans to release over 10 live service games by 2026.
"Through close collaboration between Bungie and the PlayStation Studios, we aim to launch more than 10 live service games by the fiscal year ending March 31, 2026," reads the report from Sony.
"In addition, we view the deployment of our game IP on multiple platforms as a major growth opportunity for Sony, as has been evidenced by the success of the PC versions of God of War and other first party games.
"Through this acquisition, we intend to acquire new users and increase engagement on platforms other than PlayStation, which will enable us to significantly advance our long-term growth strategy of further expanding the ecosystem of our game business.
"Catalyzed by the acquisition of Bungie, we intend to accelerate the growth of our first party game software revenue, aiming to more than double the current amount by FY25."
Sony shipped 3.9 million PS5 consoles during the quarter to bring lifetime shipment figures to 17.3 million units.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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I quit Destiny 2 because it became a second job lol good on PlayStation to find ways of making recurring revenue so they can continue to make the top notch single player games we love them for, but when it comes to live service games, I'm out
I hope this endeavor works for PlayStation and they don't get predatory when it comes to mtx.
I loooooved raiding though and going through the dungeons lol. Just on Steam alone I had like 1500 hours haha. I had a few titles that were tied to raids like Descendant, Shadow, and Blacksmith. I always rocked Blacksmith because it was such a cool title and the grind was insane!
Yeah. But, there is still a really good game to be played without raids and dungeons.
Anyway, I know what you're saying. It is like a second job if you want to do that stuff. It's not that you have to play a million hours to raid, but if you don't want to feel like the weakest link on your fire team all the time, you kind of do have to play a lot. At this point in the game's life cycle, most people that are doing that content are pretty hardcore. If you're not playing regularly, you're going to be the weakest link every time.
At least half of them will flop.
Yeah, they will be lucky to land 2 or 3. Most Gaas games die, they may end up with 0 successful games on this model!
Well, at least they have FGO... prety sure they will make something riding on Fate/"insert name here" on GaaS.
They have Destiny. So, they'll have at least one that's a success.
Indeed. But i'm talking about New stuff.
With luck, by "live Service" they mean games that guarantee support of new content for a long time, through updates... and not incomplete game, with almost non-existent content, which is only "truly ready" 1-2 years after the initial release.
Anyway, GaaS is not very appeling for me...
They're not gonna make 10 of the same game. My guess is we'll see a couple F2P things, a couple that are more MMO, maybe RPGish, 1-2 new Destiny-like hybrid RPG/looter shooters, and a couple more that are more original.
I can live with Sony making their games multiplatform, although depending on the timeframe I would go PC route, but Live Services isn`t something I want them to do.
Me too, i'm a about 3 steps away from going full PC only:
Sony making PC ports in less than 2 years.
A good number of games for PC and "not on playstation" that appeal to me.
PC prices under control, cause i live in Brazil and shit here is expensive.
At the moment even a decent PC in Brazil is costing like twice a PS5. But well I have a PC that can at least play the games at fullHD.
Again, we are in the same boat. My pc is enough atm, but if i go for a "big PC upgrade" R$7k-9k is very likely, maybe even more if economy/politics go from bad to worse (more than just likely...)
Already done so on my end. But reckon I'm out completely within ten years.
Not sure what they mean. GaaS is a terrible idea, only a few actually work. But I think we are looking at it wrong, live service could be a new Bungie game, a F2P game of some kind or even 5 mobile games none of us will ever play but will do well in Japan and China.
Well if over half of these 10 games will be smartphone ones that won`t impact the console releases It makes less bad.
With this talk from Sony about multi-platform content, I think it is clear now that closed platforms are on their last legs (this was already clear to many, but now even Sony is saying it publicly) Expensive, dedicated gaming hardware probably will mostly stop existing in a decade or so. We'll all be accessing games just like we do movies and TV now - most of us will choose subscriptions, but some of us will opt to buy the digital content. We'll have controllers connected to TVs or streaming boxes, or maybe $100 - $200 things with a little local processing power for a premium experience.
10 Live Service games... in less than 4 years? Geez, don't test the waters or anything. Just dive straight into the deep end and hope your base consumer goes along for the ride. Gross.
5 years
"we aim to launch more than 10 live service games by the fiscal year ending March 31, 2026, reads the report from Sony." We're in February 2022 right now. They have less than 4 years 2 months to launch all 10 of these Live Service Games according to their own announcement.
I'm getting downvoted because of Sony's own timetable? Nice.
I lifted you up ;-)
Thanks! :)
They most likely have been developing some of those for a couple of years and its not like they will all drop at once and most likely they will hedge their bets with at least a PC version to double their chances of it succeeding on at least one plaatform.
The live service model intends for the games to be running for years with updated content. Overwatch has been going strong for almost 6 years now. So at some point, in a relatively short span of time, all 10 of these games would theoretically be running at the same time with their road maps, season passes, etc. You would think they would develop one, see what works, learn from it, and so on. But this reeks of throwing a ton of crap against the wall to see which one sticks. In that scenario, a good portion of these "never ending games", as live service games are referred to, would end up having very short lifespans in actuality.
I think their position would be that they already have developed one that works - Destiny. From what they're saying, it sounds like they purchased Bungie specifically to get that expertise. Now they know what works, and they're going to launch some more.
Clearly, they're not going to have 10 out of 10 be successful. But, I think it's not quite as random as the throw stuff at the wall analogy. Bungie knows how to do it. So, they're likely to have more successes this way than they would without Bungie's expertise.
Thinking about it now, Sony probably had the least experience with live service games of any of the major publishers, prior to the Bungie purchase. So, looking at it that way, it begins to make sense that they would pay that huge premium for the company
GAAS is certainly throw at the wall and see if it sticks... but although improbable it isn`t entirely impossible that all 10 works out and is consistently supported, that would be bad for us that want newer games, but could happen.
The market will decide, all new IP has an aspect of throw it at the wall and see it isn't GAAS specific.
That's game making you take risks , Sony can't put one out at a time and wait for one to succeed and just copy their own game, they will do it just like their single player games and have numerous studios working on games except the model is GAAS plus there are enough GAAS games out there to know the basic structure, it reminds me of Shuey saying every successful 1st party game on average enables the creation of 7 other games some will make, a profit break even and lose money , but they will all strengthen the library and even though I don't have much of an interest in these games I understand the need for them and like Shuey how it strengthens the library for those games.
That was on PS3 (loved the diversity that brought... it was 6 games have losses, 2 break even and 2 carry the weight and make the whole PS Studios profitable. On PS4 they basically moved to almost every single game being a big seller.
Boo
I have a feeling they are just shooting wide instead of deep and hoping at least 1 sticks. Even if 1 sticks, they can get their money back on all 10. But man do I hate this games as a service thing. I hope Nintendo doesn't go this route. What would they even do? Make splatoon a live service game? Or Mario kart? Or smash? Oh God I hope not
I would rather they go back to the PS3 way of from every 10 games 6 don`t make profit, 2 break even and only 2 sell really well and cover for all the rest. But that with diversity and Single Player not GAAS.
And that’s one of the reasons the numbers were on red for Sony. Expansion is good.
Yes. put those billions in opening plenty of new studios take risks.
The only other company in the industry I am aware of that is this heavy on live service investment right now is Ubisoft.
So we know of Sony’s 25 extant projects, “over” 10 are live service games. So a number close to half of Sony’s future output is going to be service oriented.
I don’t know if that’s good or bad. There are some service games out there that are genuinely excellent games, but you also don’t want to risk over saturation
So 9 out those 25 games that Sony said are in development are GaS games, Bungie’s new IP “Matter” isn’t included in that 25 since this was before the acquisition. That 25 list also includes VR only titles.
That may not be the case. They planning 10 games for live services over the next 4 years may have some that hadn`t started development by the time of 25 being talked about. Also important to note that this news reads as plan to launch, not that they are working on 10 at the moment.
They were planning on this this way before they mentioned the 25 games, remember when they tried to buy Leyou Who owned Digital Extremes the Warframe devs plus some studio that was making a LoTR MMO for Amazon.
I also believe that the games by Haven, Firewalk and Deviation are included in that 25, at least the latter two were announced before that.
Other platform(s)? Interesting.
Live service games are just fine if done right. Superior to one and done games.
Nah one and done games are better on average than live service games.
Someone has hit these people in the head with rocks, we have enough live service games already, and your not going to get the kiddos away from fortnite with all the skins the have to play dress up. Theres 10 mmo's taking up a lot of gamers time, all the facebook pay to play models, the mobile market with Apple, and a ton of shooters/hack n slash games with online pvp and raids. Its a waste of studios time until the market fades out some or you find a hit original ideal. I could see 3 in that time frame, but you need games where folks can play offline more than online, since we have some of the worst connections ever, and no companies hardly to build out a fiber system to all. And then lets face it gaming is getting ridiculous in price and most don't have the time to sink into games like that. And a causal doesn't want to stick around some kid that can stay on 24/7 or adult and get their butts handed to them all from time invested or better connections.
I like live service games if they are good games. For instance I think Genshin Impact is excellent and if they are going to release games of that quality that really don't require people to pay money unless they want to then great.
Unfortunate if true (let`s hope less than 1/3 of their games are MP or online in core).
