The frenzy surrounding live‑service games has been well‑documented over the last ten years, and the consensus is that the industry’s obsession with turning every title into a continuously updated, revenue‑generating platform was a grave mistake. The premise—that any game could be reshaped into a live‑service experience—sucked up billions of dollars, countless development hours, and eroded consumer goodwill while devaluing beloved intellectual properties.
Major publishers and console makers spent years mining their back‑catalogues, convinced that somewhere among their legacy franchises lay the next Fortnite‑style money‑maker. The risk was obvious: the odds of turning a single title into a runaway live‑service hit were astronomically low. Yet executives rationalised the gamble by assuming that one blockbuster would offset the inevitable failures of many other projects. In practice, that logic collapsed for several intertwined reasons.
First, the industry vastly over‑estimated how often live‑service games actually succeed, thereby understating the true risk. Second, the market’s capacity to support multiple large‑scale live services at once was dramatically overstated; there simply isn’t enough player attention and spending to sustain a flood of such titles. Third, and perhaps most crucially, many companies failed to appreciate how difficult it is to run a live service well.
The margin between a profitable, well‑received service and a despised, revenue‑draining disaster is razor‑thin. The fallout was widespread. Few studios escaped unscathed, and some are still wrestling with financial crises that stem directly from over‑investment in these high‑risk ventures.
The most visible consequences—layoffs, cancelled projects, and studio closures—have fallen on employees who had little say in the strategic decisions that led to the debacle. While many firms felt the sting, Sony stands out as the poster child for this era of miscalculation. When historians write about the live‑service boom, Sony’s name will dominate the narrative. The company’s abrupt pivot toward live services epitomises everything that went wrong: an ambitious promise to launch a dozen live‑service games by March, followed by a prolonged, embarrassing reversal marked by disastrous launches and a cascade of cancellations.
Jason Schreier’s recent reporting on Guerrilla Games’ "Horizon Hunters Gathering" provides a micro‑cosm of the larger issue. The article reveals not only the direct financial outlay but also the far more insidious opportunity cost that Sony will bear for years. According to Schreier, Hunters Gathering performed so poorly in internal testing that the team is re‑tooling it into a conventional multiplayer game, stripping away the live‑service components.
This mirrors other cases, such as "Dragon Age: The Veilguard," which was pivoted from a live‑service model to a single‑player experience late in development. What makes Guerrilla’s situation especially striking is that the studio has been singularly focused on Hunters Gathering since finishing the DLC for "Horizon: Forbidden West." In effect, there is currently no main‑line sequel for the Horizon franchise in active development.
Whether or not Hunters Gathering ever reaches the market, the broader cost to Sony extends well beyond the budget line. Guerrilla, one of PlayStation’s most celebrated first‑party studios, will not deliver a major exclusive for the PS5 for the foreseeable future. The original Horizon title launched at the tail end of the PS4’s lifecycle, straddling both PS4 and PS5 hardware, and its follow‑up will likely not appear until deep into the PS6 era.
This gap represents a catastrophic misstep. Horizon was a flagship success that helped define the PS4’s library, proving that Sony’s internal studios could both launch new franchises and rejuvenate older ones.
Yet, somewhere along the line, those same studios—renowned for crafting expansive single‑player experiences—were ordered from above to convert their IPs into live services. The predictable failure of those attempts now means that several first‑party studios have essentially produced nothing of comparable significance over the past five years. Guerrilla is not alone.
Observers can spot similar voids across Sony’s release calendar, suggesting that the live‑service push has stalled other pipelines. Naughty Dog, for example, has not released a brand‑new title since 2020; its PS5 offerings have been limited to remasters while a planned "Last of Us" live‑service project was cancelled.
By contrast, studios like Sucker Punch and Santa Monica have somehow avoided the curse, hinting at internal dynamics that remain opaque but could eventually become a compelling insider story. The timing of this erosion could not be worse for Sony.
The notion that the PS5 lacks compelling exclusives has become a meme, and while the console still boasts a respectable library, the absence of key franchises and studios is palpable. Consumers form lasting impressions, and those impressions matter precisely when Sony will soon be urging players to invest in what is likely to be the most expensive console in the company’s history. In response, Sony appears to be scrambling to revert to the development philosophy that powered the PS4’s golden era, attempting to salvage whatever remains from the costly live‑service experiment and the multibillion‑dollar Bungie acquisition that was supposed to anchor it.
Yet modern game development is a long‑term endeavour; high‑quality pipelines must be seeded half a decade before a console’s launch. No amount of cash can conjure a robust slate of games overnight if the groundwork wasn’t laid years earlier.
It is easy for outsiders to dismiss the impact of such strategic blunders as merely a few tens or hundreds of millions of dollars—figures that blend into quarterly earnings reports. Opportunity cost, however, does not appear on an accountant’s balance sheet. When flagship studios waste years on an ill‑conceived side quest, the loss transcends a line‑item.
It erodes brand equity, weakens the relationship with loyal consumers, and creates a void that competitors can exploit. The ripple effects will be felt long after the cancelled live‑service titles fade from memory.
In the annals of the industry’s mistakes, Sony’s ill‑judged pivot may ultimately be recorded as the most expensive error of all—not because of the immediate financial outlay, but because of the long‑term opportunity cost of missing an entire console generation with marquee exclusive experiences.