Bend Studio Vows to Create 'Cool Stuff' Despite Sony's Live Service Cancellation

The developer behind Days Gone, Bend Studio, remains undeterred after Sony canceled its unannounced live-service project. Last week, Sony made headlines by axing two unannounced live-service games, one from Bend Studio and the other from Bluepoint Games. While Bluepoint was reportedly working on a live-service God of War game, the specifics of Bend Studio's project have not been disclosed. A spokesperson from Sony confirmed these cancellations to Bloomberg, emphasizing that neither studio would be shut down and that they would collaborate on future endeavors.

Sony's foray into live-service games has been fraught with challenges. Despite the phenomenal success of Helldivers 2 by Arrowhead, which sold 12 million copies in just 12 weeks, becoming the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game ever, other ventures have not fared as well. Concord, for instance, stands as one of the most significant flops in PlayStation's history, lasting only a couple of weeks before being pulled offline due to low player engagement. This disaster followed the cancellation of Naughty Dog's The Last of Us multiplayer game. Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida expressed that he would have resisted Sony's push towards live-service games if he were in the position of current Sony Interactive Entertainment Studio Business Group CEO Hermen Hulst.

In response to these developments, Bend Studio's community manager, Kevin McAllister, took to social media to reassure fans, stating, “Thanks for the love and support everyone, especially to those that have reached out. P.S. We still plan on creating cool shit.” This message underscores the studio's commitment to continue developing innovative content despite recent setbacks. Bend Studio's most recent release was Days Gone in 2019 for the PlayStation 4, which later saw a PC release in 2021.

Sony's leadership has openly acknowledged the lessons learned from the contrasting fates of Helldivers 2 and Concord. In a recent financial call, Sony president, COO, and CFO Hiroki Totoki highlighted the importance of implementing development gates, such as user testing and internal evaluations, much earlier in the process. Totoki admitted, “Currently we are still in the process of learning. Basically, with regards to new IP, of course you don’t know the result until you actually try it. So for our reflection, probably we need to have a lot of gates, including user testing or internal evaluation, and the timing of such gates, we need to bring them forward. We should have done those gates much earlier than we did.”

Totoki also critiqued Sony's "siloed organization" and pointed out potential issues with Concord's release timing, which coincided with the launch of the successful Black Myth: Wukong on PS5 and PC. He suggested that better coordination across organizational boundaries and more strategic release timing could prevent future cannibalization and enhance performance.

During the same call, Sony senior vice president for finance and IR, Sadahiko Hayakawa, compared the launches of Helldivers 2 and Concord, emphasizing the intent to disseminate the lessons learned across Sony's studios. Hayakawa stated, “We launched two live-service games this year. Helldivers 2 was a huge hit, while Concord ended up being shut down. We gained a lot of experience and learned a lot from both. We intend to share the lessons learned from our successes and failures across our studios, including in the areas of title development management as well as the process of continually adding expanded content and scaling the service after its release so as to strengthen our development management system. We intend to build on an optimum title portfolio during the current mid-range plan period that combines single-player games — which are our strengths and which have a higher predictability of becoming hits due to our proven IP — with live-service games that pursue upside while taking on a certain amount of risk upon release.”

Looking forward, Sony continues to invest in live-service games, with projects like Bungie’s Marathon, Guerrilla’s Horizon Online, and Haven Studio’s Fairgame$ still in development. These initiatives reflect Sony's ongoing commitment to diversifying its gaming portfolio while learning from past experiences.