Sony cancels games at Bluepoint and Bend

[the-pi-guy]

BREAKING: PlayStation has canceled two more live-service games, from subsidiaries Bend and Bluepoint, Bloomberg has learned.

Fans have long wondered what Bluepoint has been working on for the last couple of years. I can report it was a live-service God of War game.

Bluesky

[Legend]

Wtf!

Live service gaming has been a bigger blunder than ps3.

[the-pi-guy]

Baffled and disappointed.

Bluepoint's next game was one of the big things I was looking forward to. A live service GoW is even worse than anything I would've expected.

Sony has been a huge disappointment this gen.

[kitler53]

Jfc

[the-pi-guy]

Sony dominates during the PS4: should we do more of that? 

PS5: nah, let's do something completely different. 

[kitler53]

I'm just going to quote era here because this says it all...

It seems not many of Jimbo's Twelve are ever going to see the light of day, but which ones are left, and who was making what - and how do you feel about the entire initiative?


In alphabetical order
Arrowhead Game Studios: Helldivers II (Released February 2024)
Bend Studio: Unnanounced GAAS (Canceled 2025)
Bluepoint Games: God of War GAAS (Canceled 2025)
Bungie: Marathon (2025?)
Bungie: Payback (Cancelled 2024)
Firesprite: Twisted Metal GAAS (Canceled 2024)
Firewalk: Concord (Released, and Canceled 2024)
Guerilla Games: Horizon Online Title (TBD)
Haven Studios: Fairgames$ (TBD)
Insomniac: Spider-Man: The Great Web (Canceled Date Unknown)
London Studio: AAA New IP Fantasy Multiplayer Title (Canceled 2024 - Studio shuttered)
Naughty Dog: The Last of Us Factions Online (Canceled 2023)


To say that this initiative was perhaps misguided would probably be an understatement at this point

[Legend]

Is Helldivers 2 confirmed to be part of this push? It's published by Sony but only because the first was published by Sony.


It's truly crazy how bad it has been. I expected the games to come out, have fine launches, but fail to find long term success. Instead most aren't even good enough to make it to market. And if they thought Concord was good enough to make it to market, then wowza these games must have been in a bad state.

Still surprised that Fairgame has not been cancelled. That studio could have pivoted to a single player game months ago. Launching Marathon makes sense because what else would Bungie make?

I worry about Horizon Online a lot more now that Lego Horizon seemingly didn't do good. It could be a massive success but it seems like the IP will not help it out that much.



But I will give Sony credit. They at least didn't close down Bend 

[the-pi-guy]

I'm going to copy another post of mine from another forum.


I'm also baffled that Sony had them working on a live service game. I totally understood Sony wanting to make live service games, but I'm just blown away that it just seems to get worse and worse as time goes on. A lot of their live service stuff came from new studios (Bungie, Firesprite, Haven, Firewalk). I understood that strategy, even if it felt excessive to me. I thought Bluepoint was a safe studio to have making single player games.

And I was really hoping by now, that we'd be done hearing about the live service disaster. 

Even if you thought you had to make like 15 live service games, how do you pass over so many of your strong single player studios to do that? Especially for a company that practically built it's fanbase the past few gens on single player games. Sony's first party was very strong during the PS4 gen, and a lot of that credit goes to their single player studios (Uncharted, The Last of Us, Horizon, God of War, Days Gone, Bloodborne, Spider-Man, Ghost of Tsushima).

I'm getting overly dramatic here, but why on Earth did they feel like they needed to spit on that fanbase?

[the-pi-guy]

I feel like Sony's lucky that MS's pivoted to multi platform. I can't imagine that they'll have a strong few years coming up. 

[Legend]

I'm going to copy another post of mine from another forum.


I'm also baffled that Sony had them working on a live service game. I totally understood Sony wanting to make live service games, but I'm just blown away that it just seems to get worse and worse as time goes on. A lot of their live service stuff came from new studios (Bungie, Firesprite, Haven, Firewalk). I understood that strategy, even if it felt excessive to me. I thought Bluepoint was a safe studio to have making single player games.

And I was really hoping by now, that we'd be done hearing about the live service disaster. 

Even if you thought you had to make like 15 live service games, how do you pass over so many of your strong single player studios to do that? Especially for a company that practically built it's fanbase the past few gens on single player games. Sony's first party was very strong during the PS4 gen, and a lot of that credit goes to their single player studios (Uncharted, The Last of Us, Horizon, God of War, Days Gone, Bloodborne, Spider-Man, Ghost of Tsushima).

I'm getting overly dramatic here, but why on Earth did they feel like they needed to spit on that fanbase?

I don't think they cared about this stuff. Just like their push to PC they they don't understand the consequences.

No clue who deserves the blame but it just goes to show all the old PS4 leaders really were great. Their departure has made a huge difference.

[Horizon]

When I saw the news this morning I had to reread. What a shitshow.

So for the remainder of the gen we're looking at Ghost of Yotei, Death Stranding 2, Intergalactic, Wolverine, Firesprite's game, Santa Monica's game, Horizon online and maybe Venom. Enough to see out the gen but what a let down on smaller devs.Sony are so lucky their big studios are so productive. I'm not going to include HM because they could easily be working on some GAAS crud. I also don't expect fairgames to release. 

It seems abundantly clear the big successful Sony studios were able to navigate GAAS due to their prior successes. ND and GG chose to make online games, in GG case they've been wanting to do Horizon online for a while. SP might have Ghost online but Ghost shielded them from needing to go GAAS. SSM were so successful with God of War Sony weren't going to touch them. Insomniac dabbed in some GAAS but mainly focused on their bread and butter. Also the Japanese studios avoided GAAS.

The rest of the studios fell into the GAAS trap and now we're all going to pay for it. Sony by losing millions in wasted funds, devs wasting years of their lives on these projects and fans who will be waiting another 5 years for projects from studios. I still cannot believe putting BP on a God of War GAAS. My only hope is they use this knowledge and work on a God of War spin-off or remake to stabilise as they seem to be very involved with Santa Monica's workings which will shield them. Bend are in for a rough few years.

[nnodley]

Man, PS6 exclusives better be banger after banger with how sparse this gen will now become. So disappointing Sony iced this up so badly. 

[kitler53]

Is Helldivers 2 confirmed to be part of this push? It's published by Sony but only because the first was published by Sony.

yes.

It's truly crazy how bad it has been. I expected the games to come out, have fine launches, but fail to find long term success. Instead most aren't even good enough to make it to market. And if they thought Concord was good enough to make it to market, then wowza these games must have been in a bad state.

my guess is this.   12 months ago or whatever (and especially shortly after hellidivers 2) sony's senior leadership thought all of these GaaS games were going to be masive successes!..  only after that catastrophic failure that was concord did these leaders have some sense knocked into them. only now they are realizing that none are guaranteed to be a success and that everything should be reviewed to not throw more money at a bad game.

Still surprised that Fairgame has not been cancelled. That studio could have pivoted to a single player game months ago. Launching Marathon makes sense because what else would Bungie make?

I worry about Horizon Online a lot more now that Lego Horizon seemingly didn't do good. It could be a massive success but it seems like the IP will not help it out that much.

i agree with fairgame.   i kind of disagree with horizon.   assuming horizon is in the same vein as monster hunter i think it's the only project that actually made sense.   "monster hunting" robot dinosaurs as a tribe is a great fit between GaaS and IP.

[kitler53]

I'm going to copy another post of mine from another forum.


I'm also baffled that Sony had them working on a live service game. I totally understood Sony wanting to make live service games, but I'm just blown away that it just seems to get worse and worse as time goes on. A lot of their live service stuff came from new studios (Bungie, Firesprite, Haven, Firewalk). I understood that strategy, even if it felt excessive to me. I thought Bluepoint was a safe studio to have making single player games.

And I was really hoping by now, that we'd be done hearing about the live service disaster. 

Even if you thought you had to make like 15 live service games, how do you pass over so many of your strong single player studios to do that? Especially for a company that practically built it's fanbase the past few gens on single player games. Sony's first party was very strong during the PS4 gen, and a lot of that credit goes to their single player studios (Uncharted, The Last of Us, Horizon, God of War, Days Gone, Bloodborne, Spider-Man, Ghost of Tsushima).

I'm getting overly dramatic here, but why on Earth did they feel like they needed to spit on that fanbase?

you are totally on-point.   like from where i'm sitting the time line looks roughly like this:

1. collect data via psn proving that CoD and fortnight are huge money makers
2. greenlight 12+ GaaS games which is realistically more than 50% of your development staff
3. buy bungie with a public facing declaration that they needed to do so because they have no experience in making a GaaS game
4. ..
5. ..
7. release concord
8. wonder why things went wrong.

like seriously, how do you commit to step 2 knowing what you know in step 3.   

sony should have made like 1 or 2 commitments and let the other teams continue on their winning formula of single player games.   it's like for all the shame bethesda got with respect to redfall except sony did it with their entire f'ing first party.   o.m.g.

[kitler53]

stray thought that I'm going to post here:

imagine Sony took all the investment in GasS dev and instead invested in VR dev.   

still a bad investment wrt returns but at least the world would be a better place.