The Concord fiasco appears to have led Sony to cancel other live service projects.

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  • Sony's shift toward live service games has had mixed results.

  • Concord's high-profile failure came as a “huge shock” to Sony, according to Jeff Grubb.

  • Sony is still producing several live service games, but has canceled some.

A few years ago, Sony sensed a golden opportunity and decided to expand aggressively into live services. This was confusing to fans, as most of the publisher's first-party studios are known for single-player games.

Sony's decision to expand aggressively into the live services space has left fans confused. That's because most publishers' first-party studios are known for their single-player games. Despite this, Sony continued its live service push, with occasional success, most notably Arrowhead's Helldivers 2.

But even before Concorde's costly failure, cracks began to appear. Naughty Dog was set to release a live service spinoff of The Last Of Us, but ultimately canceled the project to focus on the single-player game. The studio felt that if it continued releasing live service games, it would be stuck supporting the game for years to come and would consequently not have the resources to develop other games.

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Ellie looks off-camera in The Last Of Us Part 2.

But the biggest shift in priorities occurred after the release of Firewalk Studios' debut title, Concord. Despite Sony's expensive video and marketing, there never seemed to be much interest in Concord. It's a difficult market for a paid live service using a new IP, and these factors ultimately led Sony to shut down the game just a few weeks after launch.

Yesterday, Bluepoint Games' God of War live service and Bend Studio's unknown live service were canceled by Sony. Sony has canceled a total of six live service games since launch. These include Insomniac's Spider-Man: The Great Web and an unknown live offering from London Studio.

According to Giant Bomb's Jeff Grubb, the recent cancellations of God of War and Bend Studio are a direct result of the Concord fiasco. In an episode of Game Mess Decides, Grubb said of the recent cancellations, “This happened because of Concord. This should be clear. This is what I heard. Sony was shocked by Concord, and now they're going. They're going around all the studios and taking all the projects. “If it's a live service project, there's a lot of friction that's preventing it from actually getting a chance to come out.”

Sony is still actively developing several live service projects, but appears to have solidified its new strategy of releasing triple-A single-player games every year. Live service projects in development include Fairgame$ (Haven Studios), Horizon Live Service (Guerilla), Marathon (Bungie), and Horizon MMO (NCSoft).

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Concord is an upcoming FPS from Firewalk Studios, part of the PlayStation Studios family. It is a PvP multiplayer title and is scheduled to be released on both PS5 and PC in 2024.

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