The frenzy surrounding live‑service games that dominated the industry for much of the last ten years is now widely recognized as a misstep. The belief that every title should be transformed into a live‑service experience—an outright delusion—has drained billions of dollars, countless development hours, and eroded both consumer trust and the intrinsic value of many intellectual properties.
Executives chased the fantasy of turning any franchise into the next Fortnite‑style cash cow, often ignoring the harsh reality that success in this arena is rare. Major publishers and platform owners spent years mining their back‑catalogues, convinced that somewhere among their legacy titles lay a hidden gem capable of becoming a blockbuster live‑service franchise.
The risk calculations were flawed: the actual hit‑rate for live‑service games was vastly overstated, and the market’s capacity to sustain multiple large‑scale live services at once was grossly misjudged. Most importantly, industry insiders underestimated how difficult it is to run a live‑service title successfully and how thin the margin is between profitability and alienating a player base. The fallout has been industry‑wide. Few companies escaped unscathed; many are still grappling with financial strain caused by over‑investment in costly, high‑risk ventures.
The visible consequences—layoffs, cancelled projects, shuttered studios—have disproportionately affected those with the least decision‑making power, while senior executives often escaped direct blame. Among all the players, Sony stands out as the poster child for this era.
Its aggressive pivot toward live services epitomizes the broader industry failures, from the bombastic promise to launch a dozen live‑service games by March to the subsequent, drawn‑out reversal marked by disastrous launches and project terminations. Recent reporting by Jason Schreier on Guerrilla Games’ "Horizon Hunters Gathering" offers a micro‑cosm of the larger problem and highlights a less obvious cost: the opportunity cost that will haunt Sony for years.
In short, test audiences reacted so poorly to Hunters Gathering that Sony is re‑tooling it into a traditional multiplayer game, stripping away the live‑service components. 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 Guerrilla’s situation striking is that, according to Schreier, the studio has been focused almost exclusively on Hunters Gathering since finishing the DLC for "Horizon: Forbidden West." Consequently, there is currently no major sequel to the Horizon franchise in active development. Whether Hunters Gathering ever sees release, its true cost to Sony extends far beyond the direct spend; the studio’s shift means Sony will likely miss a flagship exclusive for the PS5 era, pushing the next Horizon installment into the PS6 lifecycle. This is a monumental blunder. Horizon was a massive hit for Sony, part of a slate of first‑party titles that kept the PS4 thriving and demonstrated PlayStation’s ability to launch new franchises and revitalize older ones.
Yet studios renowned for crafting expansive single‑player experiences were redirected to produce live‑service games based on their IPs. The predictable failure of these projects now leaves several studios with little to show for half a decade of work. Guerrilla is not alone.
Observers can spot similar gaps in Sony’s release schedule that likely stem from the same live‑service push. 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 game was cancelled. Other studios like Sucker Punch and Santa Monica Studio appear to have escaped this fate, but insiders will probably have stories to tell about how they navigated the pressure.
The timing could not be worse. The perception that the PS5 lacks compelling exclusives has become a meme, and even if the console still offers a healthy library, the absence of key studios and franchises is palpable.
This perception will linger precisely when Sony needs to persuade consumers to invest in what will likely be its most expensive console generation yet. Sony now appears to be in damage‑control mode, attempting to revert to the development strategy that served it well during the PS4 era and salvaging whatever it can from the costly live‑service experiment and the multi‑billion‑dollar Bungie acquisition meant to support it.
Yet modern game development demands long lead times; building a pipeline of high‑quality releases requires years of planning, and no amount of cash can instantly generate a robust lineup. Large financial figures can make strategic errors seem abstract—ten million here, a hundred million there—yet opportunity cost is not a line item on a balance sheet. When top‑tier studios waste years on misguided side projects and miss an entire console generation, the impact reverberates through the brand, the consumer relationship, and long‑term market positioning.
In the annals of industry missteps, Sony’s ill‑judged pivot may ultimately be remembered as the most costly of all.