The craze for live‑service games that swept the industry over the last ten years has been dissected countless times. The notion that every title should be built as a constantly evolving service – the sheer absurdity of assuming any game can be turned into a live‑service juggernaut – has drained billions of dollars, consumed untold developer hours, and scorched consumer goodwill and intellectual‑property value on the altar of executive hubris. Major publishers and platform owners spent years mining their back‑catalogues, convinced that somewhere among their legacy franchises lay the next Fortnite‑style cash cow. The risk was obvious: the odds of pulling off a blockbuster live‑service were minuscule, yet the logic was that one runaway hit would offset a slew of failures.
That gamble proved flawed for several intertwined reasons. First, the industry overestimated how often live‑service games actually succeed, thereby understating the true risk. Second, analysts assumed the market could sustain a large number of high‑budget live services at once, a capacity that simply does not exist. Finally, there was a pervasive underappreciation of how difficult it is to run a live service; the line between a profitable, beloved game and a revenue‑draining, player‑hating disaster is razor‑thin.
The fallout was universal. Few companies escaped unscathed; many are still wrestling with financial strain that can be traced back to over‑investment in these costly, high‑risk ventures. The most visible consequences—layoffs, cancelled projects, studio shutdowns—have fallen on employees who had little say in the strategic choices that led to the mess. While the live‑service frenzy touched many developers, Sony stands out as the poster child for this era.
When historians write the chapter on this period, Sony will likely receive an entire page. The firm’s abrupt pivot to live services epitomises everything that went wrong across the sector: an over‑ambitious promise to launch a dozen live‑service titles by March, followed by a prolonged, embarrassing reversal marked by disastrous launches and abrupt cancellations.
Jason Schreier’s recent reporting on Guerrilla Games’ "Horizon Hunters Gathering" offers a micro‑cosm of the broader blunder. The article not only highlights the immediate financial waste but also shines a light on the far‑reaching opportunity costs that will haunt Sony for years.
In short, test audiences responded so poorly that the project is being re‑engineered as a conventional multiplayer game, stripping away its live‑service ambitions. This mirrors other cases, such as "Dragon Age: The Veilguard," which was re‑shaped from a live‑service concept into a single‑player experience late in development. What makes this situation particularly striking is Schreier’s claim that Guerrilla has been singularly focused on "Hunters Gathering" ever since finishing the DLC for "Horizon: Forbidden West." In practical terms, there is currently no major sequel to the Horizon franchise in active development at the studio. Whether or not the reworked title ever sees release, the hidden cost to Sony extends far beyond the budget allocated to the project.
Guerrilla, one of PlayStation’s most celebrated first‑party studios, will not deliver a flagship exclusive for the PS5 in the near term. "Horizon: Forbidden West" launched at the tail end of the PS4 generation, appearing on both PS4 and PS5; its follow‑up is now likely to be delayed well into the lifespan of the PS6. This delay is a catastrophic misstep.
Horizon was a massive hit for Sony, bolstering the PS4’s library with a must‑play franchise and demonstrating PlayStation’s ability to both create new IPs and rejuvenate older ones. Yet studios that had proven expertise in crafting epic single‑player experiences were redirected from above to churn out live‑service experiments using their beloved IPs. The predictable failures of those experiments now mean that several top studios have essentially produced nothing of comparable significance for the past half‑decade.
Guerrilla is not alone. Observers can spot similar gaps across Sony’s release calendar and reasonably infer that the live‑service push is the culprit.
Naughty Dog, for instance, has not delivered a brand‑new PS5 title since 2020; its recent releases have been remasters while the studio wrestled with a now‑cancelled "Last of Us" live‑service project. Other first‑party powerhouses like Sucker Punch and Santa Monica Studio appear to have sidestepped this curse, but their relative immunity will likely become the subject of insider stories in the future.
The erosion of PlayStation’s first‑party pipeline arrives at a perilous moment for Sony. The notion that the PS5 lacks compelling exclusives has become a meme, and while the console still boasts a healthy catalog, the absence of key studios and franchises is unmistakable. This perception will shape consumer sentiment just as Sony prepares to market what could become its most expensive console ever. Sony now seems to be in damage‑control mode, attempting to revert to the development philosophy that powered the PS4 era and to salvage whatever remains from the costly live‑service experiment and the multi‑billion‑dollar Bungie acquisition meant to support it.
Yet modern game development is a long‑haul endeavour; building a pipeline of high‑quality releases requires years of advance planning. No amount of cash can conjure a stellar lineup overnight if work did not begin years prior. When billions flow through the upper echelons of the gaming industry, it can be tempting to dismiss strategic blunders as mere line‑item fluctuations—ten million here, a hundred million there—absorbed into quarterly earnings. Opportunity cost, however, does not appear on an accountant’s balance sheet.
When flagship studios waste years on ill‑conceived side quests and consequently miss an entire console generation, the impact reverberates through the brand, the consumer relationship, and the long‑term health of the business. That lingering damage will outlast the memory of any cancelled live‑service title.
In the annals of industry missteps, Sony’s ill‑judged pivot may ultimately be remembered as the most expensive error of all, not because of the dollars spent, but because of the years of creative potential and market momentum that were sacrificed.