Bend Studio Vows to Create More Exciting Content Post Sony's Live Service Cancellation

The developer behind *Days Gone*, Bend Studio, remains committed to creating innovative projects despite Sony's recent cancellation of their unannounced live-service game. Last week, Sony pulled the plug on two live-service titles in development at Bend Studio and Bluepoint Games. While Bluepoint was reportedly working on a live-service *God of War* game, as per Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, the specifics of Bend Studio's project remain undisclosed. A Sony spokesperson confirmed these cancellations to Bloomberg, emphasizing that neither studio would be shut down and that Sony would collaborate with them to explore future projects.

Sony's venture into live-service games has faced significant challenges. While Arrowhead's *Helldivers 2* achieved remarkable success, selling 12 million copies in just 12 weeks and becoming the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game ever, other attempts have faltered. Notably, *Concord* turned out to be a major disappointment, lasting only a few weeks before being taken offline due to low player engagement. Sony eventually decided to terminate the game and close its developer. This followed the cancellation of Naughty Dog's *The Last of Us* multiplayer game. Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida expressed that he would have resisted Sony's push into live-service games if he were in the position of current Sony Interactive Entertainment Studio Business Group CEO Hermen Hulst.

In response to the cancellations, Bend Studio's community manager Kevin McAllister took to Twitter to reassure fans, stating, "Thanks for the love and support everyone, especially to those that have reached out. P.S. We still plan on creating cool shit." Bend Studio's most recent release was *Days Gone* in 2019 for PlayStation 4, which later came to PC in 2021.

During a recent financial call, Sony president, COO, and CFO Hiroki Totoki reflected on the contrasting fortunes of *Helldivers 2* and *Concord*. He admitted that Sony should have implemented development checkpoints, such as user testing and internal evaluations, much earlier in *Concord*'s development cycle. Totoki suggested that earlier intervention could have either improved the game or led to its timely cancellation. He also criticized Sony's "siloed organization" and the timing of *Concord*'s release, which coincided with the launch of the successful *Black Myth: Wukong* on PS5 and PC, potentially leading to market cannibalization.

Totoki emphasized the need for better cross-organizational collaboration and more strategic release timing to avoid such issues in the future. He stated, "We have a siloed organization, so going beyond the boundaries of those organizations in terms of development and also sales, I think that could have been much smoother. And then going forward, in our own titles and in third-party titles, we do have many different windows. And we want to be able to select the right and optimal window so that we can deploy them on our own platform without cannibalisation, so that we can maximize our performance in terms of title launches."

Sony senior vice president for finance and IR Sadahiko Hayakawa also compared the launches of *Helldivers 2* and *Concord* during the same financial call, noting that the lessons learned from both successes and failures would be shared across Sony's studios. He said, "We launched two live-service games this year. *Helldivers 2* was a huge hit, while *Concord* ended up being shut down. We gained a lot of experience and learned a lot from both. We intend to share the lessons learned from our successes and failures across our studios, including in the areas of title development management as well as the process of continually adding expanded content and scaling the service after its release so as to strengthen our development management system."

Hayakawa further outlined Sony's strategy moving forward, aiming to build an optimal portfolio that balances single-player games, which have a higher predictability of success due to established IP, with live-service games that offer potential upside but also carry inherent risks at launch.

Looking ahead, several PlayStation live-service games are still in development, including Bungie's *Marathon*, Guerrilla's *Horizon Online*, and Haven Studio's *Fairgame$*.