Sony’s live service woes are far from overs apparently, as the company has cancelled two more games, which were in development at Oregon-based Bend Studio and Texas-based BluePoint Games.
The cancellations come courtesy of a report by Bloomberg, which were then confirmed to the outlet by a Sony spokesperson, who said
“Bend and Bluepoint are highly accomplished teams who are valued members of the PlayStation Studios family, and we are working closely with each studio to determine what are the next projects.”
Bend Studio is best known for its open world zombie survival title Days Gone, but also previously worked on the Syphon Filter Franchise. Bluepoint has made a name for itself on remasters and remakes, including Shadow of the Colossus, Demon’s Souls, and Gravity Rush: Remastered.
It also appears that Bluepoint’s game was actually a live service spinoff of the God of War franchise. That doesn’t exactly seem like a good fit, but it’s not the first time Sony would try to spinoff one of its single player franchises.
This marks a major shift away from Sony’s live service plans, as back in January 2022 the company committed to launching 12 live service games by fiscal year 2025 (which would end on March 31, 2026). Sony then later revised that number to six, and those cuts likely included these two games.
Prior to this we’ve seen the cancellation of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us: Factions PvP multiplayer title, an online Spider-Man game, a live service Twisted Metal, and a spinoff of Destiny called Payback. Obviously, Concord also released to abysmal reception resulting in the game and developer, Firewalk Studio, being shut down.
The only ones left standing now are Bungie’s reboot of Marathon and Haven Studios’ Fairgame$. We’ve also seen rumors of two Horizon-based titles, including a co-op title and MMORPG.
At this point, it’s not entirely clear if Sony is backing off of its live service aspirations entirely, or simply trying to reinvest in a small group of ones it feels has the most potential. Either way, the plan looks drastically different from how it did a few years ago.
