Shuhei Yoshida Resisted Sony's Live Service Shift

Shuhei Yoshida, former President of SIE Worldwide Studios at Sony Interactive Entertainment from 2008 to 2019, recently expressed his reservations about Sony's push into live service video games in an interview with Kinda Funny Games. Yoshida, who just left Sony after a 31-year tenure, highlighted the inherent risks associated with Sony's investment in this genre, which he noted the company was well aware of.

The timing of Yoshida's comments coincides with a challenging period for PlayStation's live service titles. While Arrowhead's Helldivers 2 achieved remarkable success, selling 12 million copies in just 12 weeks to become the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game ever, other projects like Sony's Concord faced significant setbacks. Concord suffered a brief lifespan, being taken offline shortly after launch due to low player engagement, and ultimately canceled, marking it as a major failure for Sony. Reports from Kotaku suggest that the initial development budget for Concord was around $200 million, which did not cover the full development costs, the acquisition of the IP, or the developer Firewalk Studios.

Sony's struggles in the live service space continued with the cancellation of Naughty Dog's The Last of Us multiplayer game and two other unannounced titles, one from Bluepoint (a God of War project) and another from Bend Studio (known for Days Gone).

In the interview, Yoshida reflected on his time managing budgets and allocating resources. He mentioned that if Sony had considered shifting focus entirely to live service games, he would have resisted this move, preferring to continue supporting successful single-player franchises like God of War. However, he acknowledged that under Hermen Hulst's leadership, Sony provided additional resources to explore live service games while maintaining support for single-player titles. Yoshida praised this approach, expressing hope that some of these new ventures would succeed, as exemplified by the unexpected success of Helldivers 2.

Sony's president, COO, and CFO Hiroki Totoki, during a recent financial call, discussed the lessons learned from both Helldivers 2 and Concord. Totoki admitted that Sony should have implemented development gates, such as user testing and internal evaluations, much earlier in Concord's development cycle. He also criticized Sony's "siloed organization" and the timing of Concord's release, which coincided with the launch of Black Myth: Wukong, suggesting that better coordination could have prevented potential market cannibalization.

Sadahiko Hayakawa, Sony's senior vice president for finance and IR, emphasized the importance of sharing the insights gained from the successes and failures of these live service games across all studios. He outlined plans to strengthen Sony's development management system and to build a balanced portfolio that leverages the company's strengths in single-player games while exploring the potential of live service titles.

Looking forward, several PlayStation live service games are still in development, including Marathon by Bungie, Horizon Online by Guerrilla, and Fairgame$ by Haven Studio.