The craze for live‑service games that dominated the industry for much of the last ten years has now been dissected from every angle. 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, consumed countless development hours, and eroded both consumer trust and the intrinsic value of many beloved intellectual properties. Executives chased a fantasy of turning any franchise into the next Fortnite, pouring resources into projects that were unlikely to succeed. Major publishers and console makers spent years mining their back‑catalogues, convinced that somewhere among their older IPs lay a hidden gold mine that could be transformed into a perpetual revenue stream.
The risk calculations were wildly optimistic: the odds of a hit were treated as if a single blockbuster could offset a slew of failures. In reality, the success rate of live‑service games was dramatically overstated, and the market’s capacity to support multiple large‑scale services at once was grossly misjudged.
Moreover, many underestimated the sheer difficulty of running a live service – the razor‑thin line between a profitable, well‑loved game and a despised, money‑losing disaster. The fallout has been industry‑wide. Few companies escaped unscathed; many are still wrestling with financial strain caused by over‑investment in these high‑risk ventures. The most visible consequences—layoffs, cancelled projects, studio shutdowns—have fallen on the workers and teams who had little say in the strategic choices that led to those outcomes.
While the live‑service frenzy touched many developers, Sony stands out as the poster child for this era. Its aggressive pivot toward live services epitomises the broader industry missteps: an ambitious promise to launch a dozen live‑service titles by March, followed by a prolonged and painful reversal marked by disappointing launches and the scrapping of several projects. Jason Schreier’s recent reporting 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, "Hunters Gathering" performed so poorly in internal testing that it is being re‑engineered as a traditional multiplayer game, stripping away its live‑service components. This scenario is not unique; for example, "Dragon Age: The Veilguard" reportedly shifted from a live‑service model to a single‑player experience late in development. What makes the Guerrilla case striking is that the studio has been singularly focused on this project since finishing the DLC for "Horizon: Forbidden West." Consequently, there is currently no major sequel to the Horizon franchise in active development. Whether or not "Hunters Gathering" ever launches, Sony’s hidden cost is far greater than the budget spent on the title.
Guerrilla Games, one of PlayStation’s most celebrated first‑party studios, now faces a gap in its pipeline that could stretch well into the PS6 generation. "Horizon: Forbidden West" launched at the tail end of the PS4 era, straddling both PS4 and PS5. Its follow‑up, delayed by the live‑service detour, may not appear until the next console cycle, leaving a conspicuous void in Sony’s exclusive lineup. This is a catastrophic misstep.
The Horizon series was a cornerstone of Sony’s success on the PS4, delivering a steady stream of must‑play titles and proving that PlayStation studios could both create new franchises and revitalize existing ones. Yet studios renowned for crafting expansive single‑player experiences were redirected to build live‑service games based on their IPs. The predictable failure of those attempts now means that several top‑tier studios have little to show for the past half‑decade.
Guerrilla is not alone. Observers can spot similar gaps across Sony’s schedule and reasonably infer that the live‑service push is the cause.
Naughty Dog, for instance, has not released 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 first‑party teams like Sucker Punch and Santa Monica Studio appear to have escaped this fate, but their stories will likely become the subject of insider exposés. The timing could not be worse for PlayStation.
The opportunity costs are aligning perfectly to damage Sony’s brand at a moment when the perception that the PS5 lacks compelling exclusives is gaining traction. While the console still boasts a healthy library, the absence of flagship releases from key studios creates a narrative that could deter potential buyers, especially as Sony prepares to launch what may become its most expensive console 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 trying to salvage whatever remains of the costly live‑service experiment and the multi‑billion‑dollar Bungie acquisition that was meant to fuel it.
However, modern game development pipelines require years of lead time; no amount of capital can conjure a robust slate of high‑quality titles overnight. This mirrors the challenge Microsoft faced when it entered the current generation, highlighting the long‑term nature of strategic planning in the industry. Large financial figures can make strategic blunders appear trivial on a balance sheet – ten million here, a hundred million there – but opportunity cost is not a line item accountants can easily erase. When a studio wastes years on a misguided side project, it effectively forfeits an entire console generation’s worth of potential hits.
The impact reverberates through the brand, the consumer relationship, and the company’s long‑term competitive position, long after the abandoned live‑service game fades from memory. In the annals of gaming history, Sony’s ill‑judged pivot to live services may prove to be the most costly mistake of all, not because of the dollars spent, but because of the missed opportunities, delayed releases, and eroded consumer confidence that will shape the industry for years to come.