While Sony will continue to put out the blockbuster single player games it has become known for, the company has also made it clear that it has major plans for live service experiences going forward. The company is projecting 60% of its forthcoming investments to be dedicated to live service projects, and on top of that, it’s also brought in Bungie’s expertise to ensure that it’s actually going about it the way it should.
Speaking during a recent webcast (via VGC), PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan touched on how Bungie and PlayStation are both benefiting from each other’s expertise in different areas following the former’s acquisition by the latter. “We have been working with Bungie for almost a year, and the learnings in both directions have been very significant,” he said. “They surpassed my expectations and equally, I think Bungie is extremely excited by what they can take from SIE in terms of market reach, marketing, collaboration and the ability to amplify their IP.”
Meanwhile, PlayStation Studios boss Hermen Hulst went on to point to Bungie’s strengths and experience with live service models, and revealed that the company is being used for “a pretty rigorous portfolio review process” for PlayStation’s upcoming live service games.
“The learnings from Bungie have been very substantial in many areas,” he said. “Of course, when you’re developing live service titles, you [require] capabilities that you don’t have when you’re working on single-player, narrative-driven games.
“And these capabilities that we’ve set up inside PlayStation Studios have been helped and guided by Bungie. We also more deeply understand what success means in live services. Historically, our games always worked towards an end, and this is a large cultural shift… the launch of a game is just the beginning, and it comes with a whole set of different [key performance indicators].
“We also work with Bungie on a pretty rigorous portfolio review process that we apply to all 12 live service titles that we have in production, and these are just brief examples of some of the learnings that we have gained from working with Bungie.”
With Sony planning to release 12 live service games before April 2026, not to mention its aforementioned significant investments in their production, it’s clear that the company strongly believes this is an area where it can see significant growth over the coming years. Having seen great success with the live service model of the Destiny franchise for a consistent period over several years, Bungie does, of course, seem like the right fit to provide guidance on that front, which is something Sony has previously said was part of the reason why it was acquired in the first place.
