Shuhei Yoshida Resisted Sony's Live Service Strategy

Shuhei Yoshida, a former PlayStation executive who served as President of SIE Worldwide Studios for Sony Interactive Entertainment from 2008 to 2019, recently shared his perspective on Sony's push into live service video games. In an interview with Kinda Funny Games, Yoshida revealed that Sony was well aware of the risks associated with their investment in live service games, yet proceeded with the strategy.

The context of Yoshida's comments is particularly relevant given the mixed results Sony has experienced with its live service offerings. While Arrowhead's Helldivers 2 achieved remarkable success, becoming the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game ever with 12 million copies sold in just 12 weeks, other titles have faced significant challenges. Notably, Sony's Concord turned out to be a major disappointment, lasting only a few weeks before being taken offline due to low player engagement. The game was eventually canceled, and its developer shut down, marking a costly failure for Sony. According to a report by Kotaku, Concord's initial development deal was valued at around $200 million, a figure that did not cover the full scope of development or include the acquisition of the Concord IP rights or Firewalk Studios.

The failure of Concord followed the cancellation of Naughty Dog's The Last of Us multiplayer project. Sony also recently canceled two unannounced live service games: a God of War title being developed by Bluepoint and another by Days Gone developer Bend. These setbacks have prompted Yoshida, who left Sony after 31 years of service, to reflect on the company's strategic direction. He expressed that, had he been in the position of current Sony Interactive Entertainment Studio Business Group CEO Hermen Hulst, he might have resisted the shift towards live service games.

Yoshida explained his perspective by saying, “For me, I was managing this budget, so I was responsible for allocating money to what kinds of games to make. If the company was considering [going] that way, it probably didn’t make sense to stop making another God of War or single-player game, and put all the money into the live service games.” He noted that under Hulst's leadership, Sony provided additional resources to explore live service games without abandoning single-player titles. Despite acknowledging the high risk and competitive nature of the live service genre, Yoshida remained hopeful that some of these games would succeed, citing the unexpected success of Helldivers 2 as a positive example.

In a recent financial call, Sony president, COO, and CFO Hiroki Totoki discussed the lessons learned from both Helldivers 2 and Concord. He highlighted the need for earlier and more rigorous development gates, such as user testing and internal evaluations, to identify and address issues sooner. Totoki also pointed to Sony's “siloed organization” and the timing of Concord's release, which coincided with the launch of Black Myth: Wukong, as factors that may have contributed to its poor performance. He emphasized the importance of optimizing release windows to avoid cannibalization and maximize the impact of new titles.

Sadahiko Hayakawa, Sony's senior vice president for finance and IR, further elaborated on the company's approach during the same call. He contrasted the success of Helldivers 2 with the failure of Concord, underscoring Sony's intent to share the lessons learned across its studios. Hayakawa emphasized the need to strengthen development management and post-launch content strategies to enhance the live service model. Moving forward, Sony aims to balance its portfolio by combining its proven single-player strengths with the potential upside of live service games, acknowledging the inherent risks involved.

Looking ahead, Sony continues to develop several live service titles, including Bungie's Marathon, Guerrilla's Horizon Online, and Haven Studio's Fairgame$. These projects represent Sony's ongoing commitment to exploring the live service genre despite the challenges and setbacks encountered thus far.