A reader is concerned that the cancellation of The Last Of Us Online shows that Sony no longer has a clear vision for the PS5 and its games.
I hesitated to try and write this Reader’s Feature, because so many people this year have commented on Sony’s odd attitude lately. They still dominate in terms of console sales (the info on Xbox sales in Europe this week was shocking) but otherwise they’ve done and said almost nothing this year. Everyone’s talked about it, and nobody has a clear answer for why they’re acting like this… except maybe it has something to do with live service games.
Sony originally said they were going to release 10 (or was it 12?) by 2026 and yet we’ve not so much as had a bit of gameplay footage for any of them. And now we find out that The Last Of Us Online has been cancelled, with Naughty Dog just coming out and saying it: they don’t want to be stuck making live service content for the next five years, so to hell with it.
I mean, good for them but that does not suggest that things are going well behind the scenes. Especially when apparently Bungie gave the game a poor bill of health and then a few weeks later we find out that they’re facing job cuts. Add in the exec exits, including big boss Jim Ryan, and, just like GC said, Sony is painting a picture of a company at war with itself.
The problem is, Naughty Dog was working on The Last Of Us Online for four years. Even if they end up salvaging parts of it to use in a multiplayer mode later down the line, that is still time wasted that could’ve been spent on a new single-player game. They haven’t released a new one for three years now and how long is it going to be till the next, another three years or so? The PlayStation 5 is going to be in its twilight years before Sony’s best developer has released a single new game for it.
It’s the same for everyone else as well. The obvious explanation for why no new games have been announced lately is because Sony has had all their studios working on live service games… those same games that we’ve seen absolutely nothing of and I wouldn’t be surprised go the same way as The Last Of Us Online.
We haven’t had more games this year because everyone has been busy making live service games, which Sony now seems to have realised was a waste of time and will likely go the same way as all of Ubisoft’s many failed attempts. Sony can try to course correct, including get a new PlayStation boss, but one of the big problems of modern games is how long they take to make and now here Sony is having wasted two to three years on a wild goose chase.
It feels like there’s no direction and no vision at PlayStation at the moment. Have they really given up on live service games? Were they ever really as set on them as we assumed? Are they downscaling the number of single-player games they make or is this year just a blip? Sony isn’t saying and I’m beginning to worry they don’t actually know.
As far as I’m concerned, they’re on the precipice and if only Xbox was more competent they’d have pushed them in months ago. Imagine if Starfield had been a critical darling and brought everyone to the Xbox Series X/S over this Christmas, the PlayStation 5 would have been made to look almost like it’s a dead format by comparison.
Even as it is now, we have zero games with release dates next year and only Wolverine to even guess at. Sony is asleep at the wheel and headed for disaster. I don’t care how many consoles they sell, if the PlayStation 5 starts to get a reputation for having no good exclusives and no direction then it’ll quickly end up collecting dust.
If things turn around next year then great but that won’t suddenly make 2023 any less of a mess for PlayStation. Sony like to portray themselves as a safe pair of hands – an experienced industry veteran – but this year has shown them to be reactionary, poorly organised, and flat out incompetent.
