PlayStation Studio Head: 'I Would Like for Us, When We Fail, to Fail Early and Cheaply' - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 26 August 2025 / 3,256 Views
PlayStation Studio Business Group CEO Hermen Hulst in an interview with Financial Times stated he has learned a lesson from the failure of Concord and the team have put more measures in place to lower the impact of games that fail to meet standards.
"I don't want teams to always play it safe, but I would like for us, when we fail, to fail early and cheaply," said Hulst.
He added, "We have since put in place much more rigorous and more frequent testing in very many different ways. The advantage of every failure is that people now understand how necessary that is."
The new measures include more of a focus on group testing, learning from other PlayStation teams, and building closer relationships between the executives that plays hundreds of hours of a game before release.
Sony Interactive Entertainment last year quickly delisted Concord following the games launch and ultimately shut down developer for the game Firewalk Studios.
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 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
More Articles
Concord did fail early....but it wasn't cheap that's for sure.
Don't they already? Or have Spider-man, Horizon, GoW, Ghost of games not all been released in the last few years. 1 Live Service game from a brand new studio does not mean they aren't making those games. Like seriously, in 2024, the same year Concord released, they published 8 (new) games, only 2 were live service and one a massive success (although one was MLB, can't comment there really).
How long until if they only make story driven experiences will people say "I don't like Sony games, they only make story driven games."
Sony already cater for those types of games, they were obviously trying to branch out, just the one that failed failed hard.
Yeah, and now with Xbox releasing about 8 games on PS5 this year and helping to fill the void, it allows Sony to try other things. They don't need those solid single player games anymore, they need to take a bigger risk to make bigger profits. They can certainly afford to take those risks.
When you have to rely on your competitors to help keep your audience happy, isn't a good sign. This is why Nintendo is different.
I don't consider MS a competitor to Sony anymore though. MS is releasing multiple games on PS5/Switch 2 so how are they a competitor? That makes them a publisher
They have their own platform and that will always make them a competitor.
Their current XBSS/X platforms have failed so badly that I don't consider those competitors anymore. Their next console is going to be very powerful but also very expensive and I don't think that will be a competitor either.
The industry doesn't care on what you think, The Xbox Consoles compete with all other consoles on the market, weather it sells 1m or 100m.
That's not how the console business works. If you sell 1m no developers will support your platform. MS knows this and that is why the next Xbox will have access to steam and only use PC gamepass. If you want to believe they are still competitors go ahead, but you'll be one of the very few on this website that does believe that
Its not what you believe. You are debating facts. If Xbox has a console similar to its competitors, then it competes for the same customers.
Does AMD not compete with Nvidia because they sell alot less GPUs? Your logic says they are not competitors.
If your system is not a closed platform where developers have to develop games for it specifically, then all you have is a PC with access to steam and PC gamepass. If you want to believe that a PC with an Xbox sticker is a competitor to PlayStation then go ahead it's up to you.
You are failing to understand the point of what competition is and the goal.
If a PC type console is sold in the same industry, and is competing for the same customers, its competitions.
A fighter Jet from the 1950's is technically a competitor to the American F-35 but no-one would consider it a competitor. If you are having to debate with people that Xbox is even competing anymore then I think that says everything you need to know.
If there are two people in a race, and one person laps the other person twice, the person getting lapped IS a competitor, so you're technically right. But the race is NOT competitive, and any reasonable person watching that race would agree. In fact, most people that weren't just there to drink beer and chat with friends would have filed out of the stands long before the finish line.
Two words with very different meanings. Competition is competing. If there is no Competition, then there is no winning and losing.
Oh yeah, my bad. Sometimes I forget how the (online) gaming community works. You take up sides, block out all things negative having to do with said side and then aggressively defend your chosen hunk of holy plastic like it's WW2 and this is all life and death, amen and hallelujah forever and ever until the end of all time.
I really need to stop attempting to have discussions online.
I want discussion and happy to critique Sony for this idiocy but I'm also not blind to what Sony have been doing. If you are serious with the idea of " industry-leading, single-player, story-driven experiences " then we wouldn't have got Helldivers 2 or Astro Bot and we will never get a new Jak or Wipeout.
Sony are idiotic idiots who wasted a stupid amount of money and time having talented studios (Bluepoint and Bend) making Live Service games they then canned. Yet, I'm bloody glad they didn't can Marvel Tokon.
Whenever I go online to talk games, I either find myself being targeted, or I'm sitting around, watching others become targets. It's a real bummer. We're gamers, a small, passionate group of people who should be sticking together. Instead, we all go online and get addicted to petty fights and mean-spirited squabbles... and for what? What's the point? Why do we even care? It's utterly pointless. Utterly.
It's also exhausting.
The Fury was communicating with you really nicely and politely though, I don't really see the need for this response in this context. There is literally someone on this website that refuses to talk to me because I said I'd be OK with Sony putting games on Xbox even though they don't need to. Said i was being disingenuous and never spoke to me again.
It's just the whole addiction to arguing and disagreeing thing. Whenever I have the chance to talk games with other gamers in person, even people I don't know, I never get that. People are nice. They aren't jumping at shadows to argue with one another. They aren't constantly being disagreeable and mean and argumentative.
But online?
You can't state anything, other than agreeing 100% with the group, without someone quickly pointing out how you're wrong you are, or stupid, or biased, or whatever. It's just sad.
To be on VGChartz, it means you're probably more interested in console related topics than the average person you know in real life. We care a lot about the details here so it's much more likely for someone to disagree with you. There WAS also an extremely tribalistic side to this website but ever since Xbox fell away that side of this website has faded
It's still mostly just arguing. I just got a notification of someone disagreeing with me in another thread. Surprise surprise. It's tiring.
And you of all people should understand. Every thing you type gets down-voted into the obsess for no reason at all. lol
Actually yea it should have failed way earlier during production or early concept. The character design alone should've already been a red flag. I think when the trailer was released we all already knew it was going to fail, so I could only imagine those working on the inside should have seen this beforehand.
I personally think entire concept needed reworking, if the studio liked their narrative concepts, they should have ironed out a few characters and created a narrative driven MP like game, similar to Borderlands. Where picking one of the space ships crew for different missions but could also be played solo (have a squad of AI controlled companions).
Alas, whatever the studio wanted to make apparently, was the most generic hero shooter you could imagine. :P
Sony bought the studio a year before release because bungie convinced them Concord was a sure thing. At the same time they cancelled Deviation Games' project so that would have been the time to cancel concord too.
Sony listening to Bungie? Ha, worst people to listen to it seems now in hindsight.
With their focus being mostly on AAA games I don't think any failure in the software department is going to be cheap.
You mean any failure that gets released or near release. He means they want to fail way before release, when much less money has been poured into a project. I'm sure there's cheap failures to be had there.
Code for: "Marathon gets cancelled"
"I don't want teams to always play it safe"
My brother, playing it safe was exactly the problem!
Concord was the most generic looking hero shooter I've ever seen, in a genre that is not only overdone, but overdone by games brimming with personality compared to it. Make games that are fun and innovative, and people will want to play it.
How is that news? Fail fast is a very old and well known principle in game development.
Hulst is a dumbass
