The PS4 generation saw Sony’s first party really coming into its own, and with stellar, commercially successful games like God of War, The Last of Us Part 2, Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon Zero Dawn, and many others, PlayStation’s first party studios established themselves as the best of the best in delivering AAA story-driven single player games. The multiplayer space, however, is one that Sony has left mostly untouched in recent years- though that’s going to change in the future.
Sony recently announced the acquisition of Bungie, and though the studio is going to remain fully autonomous and multiplatform, PlayStation is going to reap several other advantages. One of those is going to be leveraging Bungie’s experience and expertise with live service models for Sony’s own future first party live service games.
Speaking in an interview with GamesIndustry, in fact, PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan said that Sony has an “aggressive” road map for expanding into the live service space, and that the Bungie acquisition is going to “considerably accelerate” that.
“We have an aggressive road map with live services,” he said. “And the opportunity to work with, and particularly learn from, the brilliant and talented people from Bungie… that is going to considerably accelerate the journey we find ourselves on.”
Ryan later added: “The way people play games has changed a lot over the last few years. We have created some wonderful properties over the course of the last 25 years, with characters that people love and resonate the world over. Offering the opportunity to enjoy those experiences in a completely different way is something that we are very excited about. I can’t go into details today, but we have a really amazing roadmap on how to do that.”
Ryan went on to add that though he was confident PlayStation would have been able to build up that level of live service expertise on its own, it would have been a long process, and bringing Bungie into the fold with all of that experience in the field should, as such, prove to be a huge boon to Sony and its plans for the future.
“I would back us to do [live-service games] ourselves, but when you have the potential to have a partner like Bungie who has been there, done it all before, learned the lessons and have got this wonderful, brilliant team who is there and has the potential to help us… we think we can take something that would have taken a certain number of years, and significantly decrease the time it will take to get it right,” Ryan said.
As for what exactly PlayStation has in the works when it comes to live service games, though the list of officially announced projects in that area isn’t long, there’s surely plenty that’s in the works. Naughty Dog is working on a standalone multiplayer The Last of Us game, while Insomniac is also developing a multiplayer PS5 title, as has Blood and Truth developer SIE London Studio. Meanwhile, rumours have also heavily suggested that a free-to-play Twisted Metal reboot is currently in the works.
