In the graveyard of live service games Concord may just be the biggest headstone, and that seems to have focused some minds over at PlayStation. Previously the noises coming from Sony were all about the importance of live service games to its future strategy, and it had announced plans to launch more than 10 live service games by the 2025 fiscal year, which ends on March 31, 2026.
Now? Not so much. A new Bloomberg report reveals that “following a recent review” PlayStation has canceled two unannounced live service games in development at subsidiaries Bend Studio and Bluepoint Games. Bend is best-known for Days Gone and, back in the day, Syphon Filter, while Bluepoint mainly handles high-profile remakes like Demon’s Souls.
GoW as a live game isn’t the most out there thing. Tens of people liked the multiplayer mode in Ascension (?) and the reception to the roguelite mode was generally very favorable. And the core game already had gear based progression that could map to something like what Ghost of Tsushima has (that has hundreds of people who like it…).
But having frigging Bluepoint spend cycles on this? I am sure that the studio asked for something more than just remakes but… what?
I don’t think it at all matches “Never ask me about my past” Dad Kratos and nobody likes Atreus enough, but one could easily imagine an “open world” live service game where new gods and factions are added every few months and you do quests for or against them.