The frenzy surrounding live‑service games that dominated the industry for much of the last ten years has been thoroughly chronicled. The notion that every title should be turned into a live‑service offering—an almost fanatical belief that any game could be monetised forever—has drained billions of dollars, countless development hours, and eroded consumer goodwill while burning valuable intellectual property on a fire of executive misjudgement. Major publishers and platform owners spent years combing through their back‑catalogues, convinced that somewhere among their legacy franchises lay the next Fortnite‑style cash cow. The risk profile was obvious: the odds of striking gold were minuscule, yet the logic was that a single blockbuster would offset a slew of failures.
In practice, this reasoning collapsed for several intertwined reasons. First, the true success rate of live‑service titles was vastly over‑estimated, meaning the risk was understated.
Second, the market’s capacity to support multiple large‑scale live services at once was grossly inflated. Finally, many executives failed to appreciate how extraordinarily difficult it is to run a live service successfully; the line between profitability and alienating an entire player base is razor‑thin. The fallout was industry‑wide. Few companies escaped unscathed, and several are still wrestling with financial crises that stem directly from over‑investment in these high‑risk ventures.
The visible consequences—layoffs, cancelled projects, studio shutdowns—have fallen hardest on those with the least decision‑making power, even though the strategic errors originated at the top. While many firms felt the tremors of the live‑service mania, Sony stands out as the most conspicuous example. Its aggressive pivot toward live services epitomises everything that went wrong across the sector: the bombastic promise to launch a dozen live‑service games by March, the subsequent embarrassment of a half‑hearted retreat, and a string of disastrous launches and cancelled projects.
Jason Schreier’s recent report on Guerrilla Games’ "Horizon Hunters Gathering" offers a micro‑cosm of this broader blunder. The article not only highlights the direct financial and resource waste but also shines a light on a less tangible, yet arguably larger, cost: opportunity cost. Hunters Gathering performed so poorly in internal testing that it is being re‑engineered as a conventional multiplayer title stripped of live‑service mechanics. This is not an isolated case—"Dragon Age: The Veilguard" reportedly underwent a similar transformation from a live‑service concept to a single‑player experience late in development.
What makes the situation extraordinary is Schreier’s revelation that Guerrilla has devoted virtually all of its post‑DLC effort on Horizon: Forbidden West to Hunters Gathering. In other words, there is currently no major sequel to the Horizon franchise in active development at the studio. Whether Hunters Gathering ever reaches market or not, the hidden price tag for Sony is massive: Guerrilla, one of PlayStation’s most acclaimed first‑party studios, will not deliver a flagship exclusive for the PS5 for the foreseeable future. Horizon: Forbidden West launched at the tail end of the PS4 era, appearing on both PS4 and PS5; its follow‑up will likely not appear until deep into the PS6 lifecycle.
This represents a catastrophic misstep. Horizon was a cornerstone of Sony’s success, part of a slate of blockbuster exclusives that kept the PS4 thriving and demonstrated PlayStation’s ability to both birth new franchises and revive older IPs.
Yet studios renowned for delivering high‑quality single‑player experiences were coerced from above to re‑tool their IPs into live‑service experiments. The predictable failure of those experiments now means that, for at least half a decade, those studios have little to show for their efforts. Guerrilla is not alone.
Observant gamers 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 released a new original title since 2020; its PS5 releases have been remasters while a planned "Last of Us" live‑service project was scrapped.
(Other studios such as Sucker Punch and Santa Monica have apparently dodged this curse, and their stories may someday provide fascinating insider perspectives.) The erosion of PlayStation’s first‑party pipeline arrives at an especially inopportune moment. The perception that the PS5 lacks compelling exclusive titles has become a meme, and while the console still offers a healthy library, the absence of key studios and franchises is unmistakable. This perception will linger precisely when Sony is trying to convince consumers to invest in what is likely to be its most expensive console yet. Sony now appears to be in damage‑control mode, attempting to revert to the development philosophy that powered the PS4 era and to salvage whatever remains of the ill‑fated live‑service strategy and the multibillion‑dollar Bungie acquisition that was meant to fuel it.
Yet modern game development pipelines require years of advance planning; no amount of cash can conjure a stellar lineup overnight. Ironically, Sony faces a problem similar to Microsoft’s early‑generation struggles: high‑quality releases must be seeded half a decade ahead, and without that groundwork the pipeline collapses. When billions swirl at the top of the gaming industry, it’s easy 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.
Having premier studios waste years on a misguided side quest and miss an entire console generation inflicts a lingering wound on brand equity, consumer trust, and long‑term revenue streams. The repercussions will be felt long after the cancelled live‑service game fades from memory. In the annals of industry missteps, Sony’s ill‑judged pivot may ultimately be remembered as the most costly error of all.