The frenzy surrounding live‑service games that dominated the industry for much of the last ten years has been dissected countless times. The notion that every new title should be built as a live‑service experience—an idea that borders on delusion—has drained billions of dollars, countless development hours, and, perhaps most damagingly, eroded consumer trust and the intrinsic value of many beloved intellectual properties.
Major publishers and platform owners scoured their back‑catalogues, convinced that somewhere among the relics lay the next Fortnite‑type cash cow. The risk was obvious: the odds of turning a franchise into a sustainable live‑service juggernaut were vanishingly slim.
Yet executives rationalised the gamble with the hope that a single blockbuster would offset a slew of failures. That optimism proved fatal for several intertwined reasons.
First, the industry consistently over‑estimated the success rate of live‑service titles, thereby understating the true risk. Second, analysts exaggerated the market’s capacity to support multiple large‑scale live services at once.
Most importantly, they ignored how extraordinarily difficult it is to run a live‑service game successfully—where the line between profit and player alienation is razor‑thin. The fallout was universal. Few companies escaped unscathed; many are still wrestling with financial crises that stem directly from over‑investment in these high‑risk ventures.
The most visible symptoms—layoffs, cancelled projects, and shuttered studios—have fallen on the employees who had the least influence over the strategic missteps that precipitated them. While numerous firms felt the sting, Sony stands out as the poster child for this era. Its abrupt pivot toward live services encapsulates many of the industry’s broader failures.
The company publicly promised to launch a dozen live‑service games by March of this year, only to retreat in a drawn‑out, humiliating reversal marked by disastrous launches and abrupt cancellations. A recent report by journalist Jason Schreier sheds light on the hidden costs of this miscalculation.
He examined Guerrilla Games’ "Horizon Hunters Gathering," a project that originated from the earlier live‑service craze. The game performed poorly in internal tests, prompting a redesign into a conventional multiplayer title stripped of live‑service elements.
This pattern mirrors other examples, such as "Dragon Age: The Veilguard," which was re‑engineered from a live service into a single‑player experience late in development. What makes Guerrilla’s situation especially troubling is Schreier’s claim that the studio has been singularly focused on Hunters Gathering since finishing the DLC for "Horizon: Forbidden West." In other words, there is currently no major sequel to the Horizon franchise in active development. Whether Hunters Gathering ever reaches the market is secondary; the real cost to Sony lies in the opportunity lost.
Guerrilla, one of PlayStation’s most acclaimed first‑party studios, will not deliver a flagship exclusive for the PS5 for the foreseeable future. The original Horizon sequel launched at the tail end of the PS4 lifecycle, straddling both consoles; its follow‑up is now likely to arrive deep into the PS6 era. This represents a catastrophic misstep.
Horizon was a cornerstone of Sony’s success, part of a pipeline that consistently supplied must‑play exclusives and demonstrated PlayStation’s ability to both birth new franchises and rejuvenate older ones. Yet studios renowned for crafting sprawling single‑player experiences were redirected from above to produce live‑service titles based on their IPs.
The predictable failure of those projects now leaves several studios with little to show for half a decade of work. Guerrilla is not alone. Observers can spot similar gaps across Sony’s release calendar.
Naughty Dog, for instance, has not delivered a new original PS5 title since 2020; its recent releases have been remasters while a planned "Last of Us" live‑service spin‑off was cancelled. Other first‑party powerhouses such as Sucker Punch ("Ghost of Yotei") and Santa Monica Studio ("God of War") appear to have dodged the curse, but their relative immunity will likely become a story of its own. The timing of this pipeline falter could not be worse.
The notion that the PS5 lacks compelling exclusives has become a meme, and while the console still boasts a robust library, the absence of key studios and flagship franchises is palpable. This perception will linger precisely when Sony is urging consumers to invest in what will probably be the most expensive console generation yet. Sony now seems to be in damage‑control mode, attempting to revert to the development philosophy that powered the PS4’s golden era while salvaging whatever remains of the costly live‑service experiment and the multi‑billion‑dollar Bungie acquisition that was meant to underpin it.
Unfortunately, modern game development is a long‑lead‑time endeavour; high‑quality pipelines must be established five years in advance. No amount of cash can conjure a stellar lineup overnight if the groundwork was never laid. It is easy to dismiss strategic blunders as mere line‑item numbers—ten million here, a hundred million there—absorbed into quarterly reports.
Opportunity cost, however, does not appear on balance sheets. When premier studios waste years on ill‑fated side quests and miss an entire console generation, the repercussions echo far beyond any accountant’s ledger. The damage to brand equity, consumer confidence, and long‑term market positioning will be felt long after the abandoned live‑service titles fade from memory. In the annals of industry missteps, Sony’s ill‑judged pivot may ultimately be remembered as the most expensive error of all.