Bend Studio, the developer behind Days Gone, remains committed to creating exciting new projects, despite Sony's recent cancellation of an unannounced live-service game. Last week, Sony canceled two unannounced live-service titles, one from Bend Studio and another from Bluepoint Games (reportedly a God of War live-service game). While the specifics of Bend Studio's canceled project remain undisclosed, Sony confirmed the cancellations and assured fans that both studios would continue operations on new projects.
Sony's foray into live-service gaming has yielded mixed results. While Helldivers 2 achieved phenomenal success, becoming the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game ever, other ventures, such as Concord, ended in failure, resulting in the game's shutdown and the closure of its development team. This follows the cancellation of Naughty Dog's The Last of Us multiplayer project. Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida even commented that he would have resisted Sony's aggressive push into live-service games.
Bend Studio's community manager, Kevin McAllister, reassured fans via Twitter: "Thanks for the love and support everyone, especially to those that have reached out. P.S. We still plan on creating cool shit." Their last release was Days Gone in 2019 (PC release in 2021).
Sony's financial call shed light on the lessons learned from both the success of Helldivers 2 and the failure of Concord. Sony president Hiroki Totoki cited issues with internal evaluation and testing processes, suggesting earlier intervention could have prevented Concord's downfall. He also highlighted the challenges of a "siloed organization" and the impact of Concord's release window, which coincided with the launch of Black Myth: Wukong, potentially leading to market cannibalization. Sony senior vice president Sadahiko Hayakawa emphasized the importance of sharing lessons learned from both successes and failures to improve future development and management strategies. He emphasized a future portfolio balancing single-player titles with live-service games, acknowledging the inherent risks involved in the latter.
Despite these setbacks, several PlayStation live-service games are still in development, including Bungie's Marathon, Guerrilla's Horizon Online, and Haven Studio's Fairgame$.
