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PlayStation Sony investing $2.1B in Gaming R&D, Focusing on Live Service

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Sony Investing $2.1B In Gaming R&D, Focusing on Live Service - Insider Gaming

Sony has expressed an intention to flesh out its PlayStation portfolio with live service games and has invested $2.1B to see it done.
insider-gaming.com insider-gaming.com

"According to the report published by Nikkei.com, Sony plans to allocate a staggering 60% of all PlayStation 5 development spending to live service games exclusively for the year ending March 2026. It was also stated that there’s a grand goal in place to have no fewer than twelve live service games in the PlayStation portfolio within that same timeline."
 
Not surprising but hey I get it.......that Fortnite money pie is crazy.

Good luck! I'll stick with the single player stuff for the most part.
 
Oh no. Yucky. Maybe Kreese was cooking with that PlayStation disillusionment thread.
 
If this was completely replacing their single player bread and butter, I'd be way more concerned. Thankfully that is not the case.

We'll see how the hell this goes, though.
 
Also "60% exclusively."

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This has the potential to not end well. Big budget games take so long to develop that what's popular today might not be 6+ years from now. Look at Suicide Squad. Even EA is putting more into single-player games and also taking multiplayer components out like with Dragon Age Dreadwolf.
 
Haven’t we known this for a while? Like a year? I guess this is just more of an official report with the actual financials
 
I will say I'm really curious to see how the Horizon one turns out. Having a co-op "Monster Hunter" Horizon game could be really cool and just made too much sense ever since the first one came out.
 
Hope they have better luck than Ubisoft did when they pivoted hard towards GAAS.
 
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60% of prior years budgets...or 60% of a new budget going forward, like say a budget that is double prior years? (I'm too lazy to read). I expect moderate success on some, maybe 1 break out hit (but still way smaller than say fortnite) and lots of cancellations. There will be angry people who invested in the cancelled games and some minor damage to Sony's brand. Then an eventual pullback to a more reasonable amount of attempts going forward. IDK man 12 different games seems surreal, I guess its true they may only need 1 to take off to pay for all of them but still.
 
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I don’t really mind live service stuff, the question would still be the quality of those games. 12 of them though clearly indicates Sony is ready to burn some money to find that gold-laying goose.
 
JorgenRaft said:
If this was completely replacing their single player bread and butter, I'd be way more concerned. Thankfully that is not the case.

We'll see how the hell this goes, though.
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I mean… no one should be of the assumption that SIE is going to release the same volume of single-player games as they once did when they’re trying to find places on the release schedule for 12 live-service titles by 2026.
 
Terrell said:
I mean… no one should be of the assumption that SIE is going to release the same volume of single-player games as they once did when they’re trying to find places on the release schedule for 12 live-service titles by 2026.
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They already said they're aiming to release 2-3 single player games a year like they usually do alongside this new live service pursuit.
 
Catalyst said:
Releasing 12 live service games in the span of 3 years just seems like you’re competing with yourself.
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Not if they each only last 9 months on the market 😂

Seriously, more companies need to take a look at how Wizards of the Coast operated prior to the Hasbro acquisition. They had Magic the Gathering and also a string of other CCGs that all lasted about 2-3 years (if they were lucky) on the market because either a) the game didn't catch with players or b) WotC didn't want to pull resources off MtG to push this other game. The only exception was Pokemon which was because it was Pokemon.

When I hear all this talk about service games I increasingly feel like we're seeing a repeat of the CCG gold rush that followed MtG or one of the MMO gold rushes following Everquest/WoW. Consumers have a limited time and financial budget, and ongoing games require them to have plenty of both to spend unlike traditional releases. There's only going to be so much pie for companies to fight over in this space.
 
I think that the Live Services bubble is already bursting and they will continue to spend money on it, it is unrealistic to think that an ordinary player can keep up to date in more than one game of this type. I still stopped with all of them because of college, in the division of time it was them or singleplayer games, the choice was pretty easy.
 
I’m guessing the play here is to assume probably eight or even nine of them will fail, but if the few that do blow up enough then really catch on it was more than worth it. Otherwise this doesn’t really speak to me. I only have so much time for GAAS so it really has to be perfect to be worth it.

I never commented on the other thread, but as long as I keep getting cool exclusive stuff regularly like Final Fantasy XVI and Spider Man 2 and then big third party stuff like Alan Wake 2 and Like A Dragon Gaiden on Playstation I’m good regardless if Sony ramps up investments elsewhere.
 
xghost777 said:
I’m guessing the play here is to assume probably eight or even nine of them will fail, but if the few that do blow up enough then really catch on it was more than worth it. Otherwise this doesn’t really speak to me. I only have so much time for GAAS so it really has to be perfect to be worth it.

I never commented on the other thread, but as long as I keep getting cool exclusive stuff regularly like Final Fantasy XVI and Spider Man 2 and then big third party stuff like Alan Wake 2 and Like A Dragon Gaiden on Playstation I’m good regardless if Sony ramps up investments elsewhere.
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I think the market doesn't have room today for 3 successful GAAS, at most one more. Even big players like Overwatch 2 are having a hard time gaining ground on the scene. And it's hard to think of something coming from Sony, because even though they also release it for PC, it's very difficult to imagine them releasing a game for XBox or Switch, which further limits the game's reach.
 
LinkURL said:
I think the market doesn't have room today for 3 successful GAAS, at most one more. Even big players like Overwatch 2 are having a hard time gaining ground on the scene. And it's hard to think of something coming from Sony, because even though they also release it for PC, it's very difficult to imagine them releasing a game for XBox or Switch, which further limits the game's reach.
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I think there’s room for a few more GAAS games that aren’t competing at the very top level. If it’s the truly top level Sony is aiming for, they’d be absurdly lucky if one of them enters the conversation.
 
xghost777 said:
I think there’s room for a few more GAAS games that aren’t competing at the very top level. If it’s the truly top level Sony is aiming for, they’d be absurdly lucky if one of them enters the conversation.
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Yes, in that sense I agree, something interesting can come out if you leave the basic Shooter, Sports, MOBA and MMOs.
 
12 live services together? Ooof, only a handful of live services even do well and they require constant development too. Hope this doesn't affect the rest of their development too much
 
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LinkURL said:
I think the market doesn't have room today for 3 successful GAAS, at most one more. Even big players like Overwatch 2 are having a hard time gaining ground on the scene. And it's hard to think of something coming from Sony, because even though they also release it for PC, it's very difficult to imagine them releasing a game for XBox or Switch, which further limits the game's reach.
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There's probably dozens upon dozens of "live service" games running right now that are making pretty good money and maintaining a decent playercount. I think watching traditional AAA pubs step into this space and fail spectacularly is a larger number of factors. As somebody who plays a lot of ongoing multiplayer stuff, they're just way too slow at making anything, and when they do shit is boring as hell and mad bloated on the budget.
 
Supreme Overlord said:
I do believe that is how the Battle Royale concept works, yes.
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Way underrated comment here

LinkURL said:
Yes, in that sense I agree, something interesting can come out if you leave the basic Shooter, Sports, MOBA and MMOs.
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That’s it really, people will more likely try your games out if you’re doing something new or fresh. There are quite a few smaller scale live service games that seem to be doing pretty well for themselves, even if they’re not demolishing the bank
 
meatbag said:
That’s it really, people will more likely try your games out if you’re doing something new or fresh. There are quite a few smaller scale live service games that seem to be doing pretty well for themselves, even if they’re not demolishing the bank
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Sony would have to take the "small scale" concept seriously for this to not backfire royally. Balance innovation and good service with reasonable budgeting.

Because if they are going with the idea of throwing ideas at the wall until something sticks, they could risk blowing up waaaay too much.
 
How many live GAAS’s can the market take before it saturates? I guess SIE really wants to find out.

This is poor management. The majority of GAAS’s don’t catch on and then shut down. Only a few are hits and make good money. SIE is just managing by spreadsheet where if they drag the GAAS data by another row then revenue will just increase forever.

What happens next? What happens after the few hits have run their course and the flops are long gone? GAAS’s are very expensive to make and maintain. They are high risk, high reward business ventures.
 
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I said it in the Future of PlayStation thread, and I'll say it again here: The GaaS push is Jim Ryan's Don Mattrick moment. They're trying to break into a thing that's already far too crowded, when they should have just had their first party studios moving forward put out games of differing sizes and budgets like Nintendo does so that they would have a more consistent publishing output from a quantity standpoint.

In this world that has Fortnite, Apex, CoD Warzone, PUBG, Destiny etc, who the hell thinks enough people are going to line up to play Fair Game Dollar and spend on microtransactions to make it profitable? Where is this untapped market that I'm not seeing, full of people who wanted nothing to do with those titles, but the SIE shooter brings them in?
 
The whole ”let’s throw a bunch of live service games at a wall and see what sticks” is a horrible strategy. All that does, is draw more ire for your stuff. Live service games live and die by their support, and when Sony kills off these failed projects, it’s going to make people hesitant to jump in. It happened with EA, it happened with Ubisoft, and it will happen here.

This is pretty bad for Sony honestly.
 
Mer.Saloon said:
Well it is 12. Maybe one of them will hit it.

This is basically like Nintendo's mobile initiative.
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this seems to be ALOT more expensive than Nintendo's mobile push as well.

Having their own Fortnite isn't going to happen. Best case scenario for them I imagine is another Apex Legends, worse case is another Anthem
 
Some of these are surely gonna be FPSs but I think it'll be key to play around with different genres for something like this.

We're almost certainly getting a new Twisted Metal at some point with the show sort of rebirthing the IP so I wonder if that is gonna have a GaaS model. I think Rocket League has been the only one to get huge in that category.
 
Lozjam said:
The whole ”let’s throw a bunch of live service games at a wall and see what sticks” is a horrible strategy. All that does, is draw more ire for your stuff. Live service games live and die by their support, and when Sony kills off these failed projects, it’s going to make people hesitant to jump in. It happened with EA, it happened with Ubisoft, and it will happen here.

This is pretty bad for Sony honestly.
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I don’t think Sony cares. They probably think that since the PS brand is so big and “invincible” that they can do this stuff without hesitation
 
Jahranimo said:
Lol!

but yeah, if they were abandoning single player games altogether that would suck as its a part of their current brand identity.
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I think the thing is they are barely increasing their investment in single player games (basically just a token increase in costs rise as far as i can see) so it means the same few studios will make the big PS Studios single player games that take longer and longer to make... at a certain point, yeah there's gonna be less single player games coming out (usually 2 a year in PS4 gen, now more like one a year 2023 onwards) because they aren't expanding that aspect of their portfolio - and if a live service does well for them, the success is not going to get invested into single player games, it will get put into more live services.

So yeah, obviously they are playing the stock market like all big tech and they need to hit their metrics to get the super profits or have the buzzy keywords to keep wall street happy...
 
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JorgenRaft said:
Some of these are surely gonna be FPSs but I think it'll be key to play around with different genres for something like this
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Yep, that would be the smart way to do it. I think a live service Twisted Metal or Ape Escape could work really well. I definitely think that any FPSes they try to push are destined to fizzle out.

aus89 said:
and if a live service does well for them, the success is not going to get invested into single player games, it will get put into more live services
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I mean if Sony is smart they’ll continue diversifying their output. Not saying they won’t lean into live service if that’s where the money is, but I don’t think they’ll be abandoning singleplayer games anytime soon.
 
The thing that always boggles my mind with these live game investments is that the pubs go in EXPECTING the majority to fail.

With traditional games, you at least hope for them to make a ROI. But with these live service games, its just a matter of gambling on a bunch of them and hoping one sticks.

Even if this does provide a hit for Sony, live service is so different from traditional, I can't see how this wouldn't eventually cannibalize their more traditional single player output. And at a time when AAA games take longer to make.
 
meatbag said:
I mean if Sony is smart they’ll continue diversifying their output. Not saying they won’t lean into live service if that’s where the money is, but I don’t think they’ll be abandoning singleplayer games anytime soon.
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No, i definitely don't think they'll abandon it (in the near term) - I just think they'll maintain their current studios making their big games and fill out their schedule with partnerships where they don't have to pay for all of development (Final Fantasy, Ronin, smaller stuff like Stellar Blade) while they put all their investment into live services where their shareholders can get bigger returns (despite bigger risk). I think only Housemarque and Firesprite are acquisitions making anything single player, and i believe all the PS Studios that have expanded to build out another team have been to add a MP team.
 
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