The frenzy surrounding live‑service games that dominated the industry for much of the last decade is now well documented. The notion that every new title should be built as a live‑service experience—an idea that bordered on the absurd—has siphoned off billions of dollars, countless development hours, and a substantial amount of consumer goodwill and intellectual‑property value, all in the name of executive ambition. Major publishers and platform owners spent years combing through their back‑catalogues, convinced that somewhere among their legacy franchises lay the next Fortnite‑style money‑maker. The risk was obvious: the odds of creating a runaway live‑service hit were minuscule, yet executives rationalised the gamble by assuming that a single blockbuster would offset the many inevitable failures.
That assumption proved flawed for several intertwined reasons. First, the actual success rate of live‑service games was dramatically over‑estimated, meaning the risk profile was far more severe than anticipated. Second, the market’s capacity to sustain multiple large‑scale live‑service titles at once was grossly misjudged. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the industry underestimated how difficult it is to run a successful live‑service product and how razor‑thin the line is between profitability and alienating a player base.
The fallout was industry‑wide. Few companies escaped unscathed, and many are still grappling with financial crises that stem directly from over‑investment in these costly, high‑risk ventures. The most visible consequences—layoffs, project cancellations, and studio closures—have fallen on the workers who had the least say in the strategic choices that led to those outcomes. While many firms felt the sting of the live‑service mania, Sony stands out as the most conspicuous example.
Its abrupt pivot toward live‑service titles epitomises everything that went wrong across the sector: a bombastic promise to launch a dozen live‑service games by March, followed by a prolonged and humiliating retreat marked by disastrous launches and the scrapping of projects. Jason Schreier’s recent reporting on Guerrilla Games’ "Horizon Hunters Gathering" provides a micro‑cosm of this broader failure. The article not only highlights the direct financial waste but also illuminates a far larger, less tangible cost—opportunity cost—that will haunt Sony for years. In short, test audiences responded so poorly to Hunters Gathering that the project is being re‑engineered into a conventional multiplayer title, stripping away its live‑service components.
This is not an isolated case; Dragon Age: The Veilguard, for instance, was reportedly a live‑service effort until late in development, when it was re‑tooled into a single‑player experience. What makes Guerrilla’s situation extraordinary is that, according to Schreier, the studio has been working almost exclusively on Hunters Gathering since finishing the DLC for Horizon: Forbidden West.
Consequently, there is currently no major sequel to that flagship franchise in active development. Whether Hunters Gathering ever sees release, its true cost to Sony extends far beyond its budget: Guerrilla Games—one of PlayStation’s most acclaimed first‑party studios—will not deliver a major exclusive for the PS5 in the near term.
Horizon: Forbidden West launched at the tail end of the PS4 era, spanning both PS4 and PS5; its follow‑up is now likely to arrive well into the PS6 generation. That delay represents a catastrophic misstep.
Horizon was a monumental success for Sony, bolstering the PS4’s library with a must‑play title and proving that PlayStation’s internal studios could both birth new franchises and rejuvenate older IPs. Yet, somewhere along the line, those studios with proven expertise in crafting blockbuster single‑player experiences were ordered from above to pivot to live‑service models. The predictable failures of those projects now leave several studios with little to show for half a decade of work.
Guerrilla is not alone. Observant gamers have noted conspicuous gaps in Sony’s release schedule and can reasonably infer that the live‑service push is the culprit.
Naughty Dog, for example, has not released a new original PS5 title since 2020; its recent releases have been remasters while a planned live‑service version of The Last of Us was cancelled. Other studios such as Sucker Punch (Ghost of Yotei) and Santa Monica (God of War) appear to have escaped the worst of the curse, but their relative luck may itself become a subject for future insider accounts. The timing of this erosion in PlayStation’s first‑party pipeline could not be worse.
Opportunity costs are now aligning to inflict maximum damage. The meme that the PS5 lacks compelling exclusives is gaining traction, and while the console still offers a healthy catalog, the absence of key studios and franchises is undeniable. This perception will shape consumer sentiment precisely when Sony is trying to persuade buyers to invest in what will likely be the most expensive console in its history a few years from now. Sony seems to be in damage‑control mode, attempting to revert to the development strategy that powered the PS4 era and to salvage whatever remains from the ill‑fated live‑service experiment and the multi‑billion‑dollar Bungie acquisition that was meant to underpin it.
Yet modern game development is a long‑haul endeavour; establishing a pipeline for high‑quality releases requires half‑a‑decade of lead time, and no amount of cash can conjure a robust lineup overnight. When billions of dollars flow through the upper echelons of the industry, it is easy to dismiss strategic blunders as mere line‑item variances—ten million here, a hundred million there—absorbed into quarterly earnings. Opportunity cost, however, does not appear on any balance sheet.
When flagship studios waste years on a misguided side quest and consequently miss an entire console generation, the loss is not recorded as an expense but as a lingering impact on brand equity, consumer trust, and long‑term revenue potential. That intangible damage will echo long after the cancelled live‑service title fades from memory, and in the annals of industry missteps, Sony’s poorly judged pivot may prove to be the most costly of all.