“It’s difficult for me to take any of that stuff personally because I believe in the art, because I believe in what we’ve done,” said Cross in an interview with ReaderGrev. “I think we did something really cool, and I think it will pan out. I can’t control the way the game plays. I’m not a designer. I’m not the game director. I can only control what I can control, and what I could control, I feel really good about.”

He went on to note that, while there might be some hate coming his way from some sections of the online fandom, he can’t stop being proud of what he achieved during his tenure at Bungie.

“And you can’t take that away from me, as much as the haters try online or wherever, and whether someone doesn’t happen to like the art direction personally, whether they don’t agree with some political thing Bungie did, or whatever the animosity du jour is, you can’t take the thing I care about the most away. There’s a part of me definitely that feels bummed, but sort of in the same way you feel bummed like you got unlucky.”

In the same interview, Cross also spoke about his decision to leave Bungie, which seemingly stemmed from the fact that he wanted to do work on more projects for himself. The fact that the 15 years he spent at the studio only ended up with him working on two major franchises—Destiny and Marathon—was also a big part of his decision.

“You know, I’m not a founder of Bungie,” he explained. “This is not my company. And I’m conscious of the number of projects I get to work on in my life. I’m not getting any younger. I’ve spent what will ultimately be 15 years, essentially, on two projects for Bungie: Destiny and Marathon, with film work in between. So after six years, leaving a week or two before release lock, I felt an incredible amount of satisfaction in what we’d done. And the natural cadence of the kind of work that happens post-launch in a live service game, I also understood what that was looking like.”

Cross had announced his departure from Bungie back in December. One month later and the studio would officially confirm the release date for Marathon. For more details on the extraction shooter, check out its PC requirements. Also check out how its Free Kit-styled Runner, the Rook, mixes up the gameplay you would expect from playing a Scavenger in Escape From Tarkov while also giving players tough choices.

He also spoke about his time with the company when it was focusing on single-player titles, and the moves Sony made after his departure. During Layden’s time at Sony as an executive, the company was releasing critically-acclaimed titles like God of War, Ghost of Tsushima and Horizon Zero Dawn.

“It’s like a mirage on the top of a sand dune,” said Layden. “You pursue it. You can’t quite get there. Or if you do get there, what you brought to the party no one wants to play anyway.”

Further in the interview, he discussed the conversations going on at Sony about focusing more on some multiplayer titles, especially with the success of live-service games at the time like Fortnite. Referring to the incredibly-successful battle royale title, Layden described it as being “a classic example of catching lightning in a jar” – something that can’t really be planned or prepared for.

“My view at the time was, ‘We’re super strong on single-player. We have the best narrative in the business.’ It was a case of, ‘I’m doing The Last of Us—that’s where we swim. I’m gonna do Spider-Man‘ … Fortnite is the classic example of catching lightning in a jar, you can’t plan for that,” he said. “You can’t prepare for that. You can’t envision that.”

As for more companies wanting to get their hands on a similar level of live-service success as games like Fortnite and Overwatch see, Layden noted that there have been plenty of attempts at doing just that. He did mention, however, that despite best efforts, most games trying to enter the space don’t really end up as successful.

“The highway is littered with people wanting to take on Fortnite, with people trying to do Overwatch with different skins,” he said. “If you’re trying to go into that space because you have this illusion in your mind of big sacks of money coming every day for the rest of your life, for most it doesn’t happen.”

While Sony might have scaled back on its live-service efforts in light of the failure of Concord last year, the company’s CFO Lin Tao noted during an earnings call back in August that it is still committed to live-service games. Tao also confirmed that 40 percent of the revenue generated by PlayStation in that quarter came from live-service games.

“Last year Concord [shut down], and this year Marathon was postponed, so somewhat negative news has been coming out,” Tao said (via an interpreter) during a Q&A session following the earnings call. “But if we look at the past five years, five years ago live service games were almost non-existent for PlayStation Studios. We [now] have Helldivers 2, MLB The Show and Gran Turismo 7, and Bungie’s Destiny 2, so we have these four live services contributing to sales and profits in a stable manner.”

“Last year Concord [shut down], and this year Marathon was postponed, so somewhat negative news has been coming out,” Tao said (via an interpreter) during a Q&A session after Sony’s recent earnings call, as caught by VGC. “But if we look at the past five years, five years ago live service games were almost non-existent for PlayStation Studios. We [now] have Helldivers 2, MLB The Show and Gran Turismo 7, and Bungie’s Destiny 2, so we have these four live services contributing to sales and profits in a stable manner.”

Tao also spoke about how the few live-service games that Sony has been offering have managed to contribute to around 40 percent of the revenues generated by PlayStation in this quarter. She also notes that, if a whole year is taken into account, their contribution likely falls down to between 20 and 30 percent. However, this is still a big chunk of the generated revenue, especially when seen from a long-term perspective.

“For Q1 the live service ratio was about 40%, for the full year it’s a little less, probably between 20-30%,” she said. “So in terms of the transformation, it’s not entirely going smoothly, but from a longer-term perspective, if you look at the changes over five years you see that there’s definitely been a change.”

“Of course, we recognise that there are still many issues, so we should learn the lessons from mistakes and make sure that we introduce live service content where there’s less waste and it’s more smooth.”

The mistakes that Tao referred to likely include several cancelled projects, as well as the infamously short-lived shelf life of last year’s Concord. A report as recent as January this year indicated that another live-service project at Days Gone developer Bend Studio had also been cancelled. The game was reportedly under development for several years before being cancelled.

Some of the major cancelled live service projects at Sony include The Last of Us Online, a multiplayer Spider-Man game, a rumoured reboot of the Twisted Metal series, and an unannounced game at London Studio. While Sony itself hadn’t made any comments regarding the matter, rumours from earlier this year had indicated that the failure of Concord led to the cancellation of these projects.

“Sony has been shell-shocked from Concord, and now they’re going around to every studio and reassessing every project,” said Giant Bomb’s Jeff Grubb back in January. “If it’s a live-service project, there’s a lot of friction against it, preventing it from getting a chance to come out.”

Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida had also revealed after resigning from the company that he would have pushed back against this focus on live-service games.

Remember when Sony said that Ghost of Yōtei marked the beginning of plans to launch “major single-player games titles every year?” That really came back to haunt me recently when the company highlighted Death Stranding 2 and Ghost of Yōtei as its big single-player offerings for the rest of the fiscal year. And the next? Well, it hasn’t said anything, but Marvel’s Wolverine and Intergalactic are coming. Eventually. There’s at least Housemarque’s Saros, which has a confirmed 2026 release window. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNZ8w6clqo4

Of course, what the company doesn’t want to admit is how much of a failure its live service initiative has been or how much it set back its many studios (the ones still around, that is). When it closed 2023 with Naughty Dog cancelling The Last of Us standalone multiplayer title, it probably didn’t expect Helldivers 2 to become such a massive hit. Thus, it continued to fulfill Jim Ryan’s ambitious plan to release over 10 live service titles before April 2026.

It’s now June 2025. The report card currently sits at three more projects confirmed to be cancelled before they even saw the light of day, much less an announcement trailer. SIE London Studio is gone. Bend Studio recently faced layoffs and is apparently trying to come up with something new. Bluepoint Games is still a relative unknown. The rumored Twisted Metal and Insomniac’s Spider-Man: Great Web are allegedly canned. Fairgame$ (which is now reportedly Fairgames sans dollar sign) is in trouble with Haven Studios founder Jade Raymond gone and no updates since the CGI trailer from two years ago. An alleged external playtest was reportedly met with a mixed response, with some apparently describing the battle royale/extraction shooter experience as borrowing elements from Fortnite and The Division.

I forgot that a Horizon multiplayer title was in the works, and you did too.

And I would go, “The less said about Concord, perhaps the biggest first-party failure in Sony’s history, the better.” However, at a reported cost of $200 million, which didn’t include the price of acquiring Firewalk Studios or the game’s rights (and didn’t even fully fund development), that statement doesn’t do enough justice to the sheer damage caused.

Then there’s Marathon, and where do we even begin? An iffy reveal that lacked the energy of the first trailer. “Varied” feedback from its closed alpha, according to Sony – a neat euphemism for “mixed, leaning negative.” Annoyances at the lack of content. And, of course, the controversy involving the unauthorized use of an independent artist’s assets. The damage is apparently so extensive that Bungie hasn’t showcased anything new ever since. Perhaps the biggest positive is that it delayed the game past September 23rd and is looking to polish the game further, including adding proximity chat. As it stands, the most impressive thing is the CG trailer, which may as well exist in a different universe.

Where did it all go so wrong? How did a publisher for some of the greatest triple-A single-player titles in the world fall so far? How did the PS5 have more incredible first-party titles at launch than the entirety of last year (and no, The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered doesn’t count)? Yes, there are some great games to look forward to this year, and there’s only a three-month gap or so between Death Stranding 2 and Ghost of Yōtei, but the future is looking very iffy. The fact that Microsoft, of all companies, has published more titles this year than Sony, both third and first-party, is truly fascinating, and its future first-party offerings look much more enticing between Fable, Gears of War: E-Day, the next Forza, State of Decay 3, Perfect Dark, and Clockwork Revolution.

At what point did the powers that be at Sony decide a brand known for its incredible franchises should sweep them under the rug in favor of making a quick buck? When did it decide that names like Uncharted, Sly Cooper, LittleBigPlanet, Until Dawn (barring the iffy remake), Jak and Daxter, Syphon Filter, MotorStorm, inFamous, Killzone, Resistance, and so on should be kept on ice? Heck, even The Last of Us, for that matter. It’s been five years since The Last of Us Part 2 was released, and there are still no signs of a sequel or any kind of follow-up or continuation. Then again, at least Naughty Dog has other titles in the works, including an announced project that Neil Druckmann is producing.

What makes the situation even sadder is that these decisions are negatively impacting the company itself. Outside of layoffs, there’s also the money and time wasted on these cancelled projects. Imagine if Bluepoint Games was working on the eternally rumored Bloodborne remaster. What if Motorstorm made a comeback with even better visuals and larger environments? What if, and stay with me here, a sequel to Days Gone? The latter seems somewhat possible somewhere down the line, but it’s anyone’s guess as to when.

Is it worse than Sony continuing to invest in Marathon and Fairgames, which could either be duds or disasters in the making? Honestly, choose the lesser evil at this point. Similar to Concord, it’s probably a case of Sony trying to recoup some of the cash already invested in these titles. Sadly, it’s not. In Sony’s recent Fireside Chat with investors, PlayStation Studios head Herment Hulst said the company remains “very committed to building a diverse and resilient live service portfolio.”

While acknowledging the “challenges” of Concord, he added, “We have reviewed our processes to ensure that we’re not going to make those mistakes again. We have introduced much more rigorous processes for validating our creative, commercial, and development assumptions, and we now do that on a much more ongoing basis.” Oh, and the goal with Marathon is to release a “very bold, very innovative and deeply engaging title.” This was before the announced delay, but the message is clear: Sony isn’t done with live service by a long shot, even after all the failures.

The damage isn’t irreparable, especially when considering an entire console generation. You could also argue that Sony doesn’t need to think about how many first-party titles it’s releasing. After all, the PS5 has reportedly earned more profit than the PlayStation 1 through 4 combined. It hosted some excellent third-party games this generation, including Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Black Myth: Wukong and Silent Hill 2 remake.

There’s even Lost Soul Aside to look forward to, even with the multiple delays throughout the years, to say nothing of all the ChinaHero projects – Daba: Land of Water Scar, Exiledge, The Winds Rising, the list goes on. Granted, AI Limit and Evotinction are games that came and went without much impact, but they’re certainly smaller scale compared to the other heavy hitters.

However, it seems we’ve gone beyond “arrogant Sony” and straight into the realm of “indifferent Sony,” where it seemingly can pivot to and from a failed initiative without worrying that players will stop buying the PS5. And if you don’t get a new game in your favorite franchise, much less a first-party title, well, isn’t that a shame? Maybe in the next generation.

As someone who spent dozens of hours in Ghost of Tsushima: Legends, I still remember looking back on the initial announcement of the initiative and thinking, “Okay, but that’s way too much.” It seemed like Sony didn’t fully grasp why Legends – and even Factions from The Last of Us – was so great and popular, but surely it wouldn’t mess up, right? At this point, with its stubborn commitment to finding some success in the live-service space, I can only hope that it moves forward and sticks to what it does best. The only thing worse than chasing trends that your fans are sick of is chasing those that they never really cared for in the first place.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

“Many players know about Concord, and what happened with that project,” wrote the developer. “Concord failed to inspire players, and the messages was heard loud and clear. It was gut wrenching to see our project fail, and be the laughing stock of many online. I have learned that failure, is what drives me to succeed. No one feels as bad as the people who put their time on the line, hoping it will entertain the masses of gamers across the globe. I am not asking for pity, or even sympathy because, after all this is the name of the game, you win or lose. The margin for success is very thin. I took a chance, and lost.”

The developer also talks about being excitement after getting a look at Marathon, as well as seeing the people working hard at making the game.

“Some of you probably smell blood in the water, and probably want to roast me for no longer lurking, and exposing myself,” they continued. “I hope you don’t, and see that people create these projects, and work very hard to be the next big thing. Seeing the faces of the developers on the Bungie stream, gave me hope, and excitement for what is to come for Marathon.”

“I commend them for taking a chance, trying something foreign to them, that isn’t proven, nor guaranteed to succeed. It takes a lot of courage.”

Further in the Reddit thread, the developer spoke about how players shouldn’t already be judging a game before its release. In a comment, they wrote that “to call [Marathon] a failure before it’s even out, is wild to me.”

Details about Marathon were revealed over the previous weekend with a gameplay showcase. Among the things revealed was the fact that Marathon will be coming to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on September 23, with a closed alpha test starting on April 23. At launch, the extraction shooter will feature 3 maps and 6 playable characters, referred to in-game as Runners.

In an interview, game director Joe Ziegler spoke about wanting to give players the polish they expect from a shooter developed by Bungie with layers of gameplay that will help players tell their own emergent stories through wins and losses in the gameplay sandbox.

“I do think that the ceiling could rise from where it’s at currently,” Ziegler said. “And part of that is I think that we have a whole generation of people who are growing up in sandbox experiences. We have [battle royale] players, we have players who are playing other sandbox shooters as their main game as they were growing up. And for them, they’re creating a lot of these stories, but a lot of the stories that they’re creating are framed by the systems that those games embrace, right?”

Marathon will not be a free-to-play game. Bungie, however, has not yet confirmed its price.

In the latest Game Mess podcast, GiantBomb’s Jeff Grubb revealed that the cancelled live-service titles from Bluepoint Games and Bend Studio were reportedly due to Concord. “This happened because of Concord. Like, this should be clear. That’s what I’ve been told.

“Sony has been shell-shocked from Concord, and now they’re going around to every studio and reassessing every project. If it’s a live-service project, there’s a lot of friction against it, preventing it from getting a chance to come out.”

He also reports that these were the main projects from both studios. Alongside Concord, they join the likes of cancelled multiplayer titles for The Last of Us and Marvel’s Spider-Man, the rumored Twisted Metal reboot and Sony London’s fantasy RPG.

Sony noted that the cancellations won’t result in studio closures, but it’s unknown if there will be layoffs. Plans are underway to discuss the future, so stay tuned for further updates.

LEVEL ZERO: EXTRACTION

Doghowl Games’ extraction shooter is currently in early access, so technically, it can get better- but that isn’t the trajectory it has followed thus far. Level Zero: Extraction had a promising enough premise, but was let down by significant gameplay and balancing issues even at launch. In the time since then, the developer has consistently made updates that have proven unpopular with players, leading some to wonder just how healthy the game’s future is going to be.

Star Wars Outlaws

As iffy as certain things looked before launch, there was still some hope for Star Wars Outlaws from Massive Entertainment’s involvement alone. The Reputation and Wanted system, more organic exploration, and focus on single-player were all the right moves, but it didn’t land for consumers. Those who took the plunge suffered numerous bugs and issues with movement, combat, AI, stealth, and so on. It’s a better game now, but Outlaws still needs work.

Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League

Even with successes like Helldivers 2, this year just wasn’t it for live-service titles. However, the negative response to Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League began well prior, with many criticizing the looter shooter’s format. The release sadly did nothing to rise to the occasion, featuring a horrendous story that falls off a cliff, insufferable characters, and the same dreary games-as-a-service mission structure seen hundreds of times before. With a $200 million impact on Warner Bros. Discovery’s revenue, Suicide Squad clearly didn’t meet expectations.

Skull and Bones

Alleged reboots, high-profile departures, constant delays, and a ballooning budget – Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones had all the key ingredients for a potential disaster. Adding in all the live-service staples like seasons, always-online gameplay, a focus on multiplayer, and whatnot hastened the game’s doom (calling it a quadruple-A title also didn’t help). With player numbers reportedly coming in at less than a million around launch, it was a failure before it even got started.

Planet Coaster 2

Incredible visuals and the studio’s penchant for attention to detail did little to make a difference for Planet Coaster 2, which is, by all accounts, a hotly awaited sequel, that much more palatable. The awful UI, pathing issues, lackluster pools, awful characters and various bugs were just too significant to ignore, even with the better campaign. Frontier has rolled out improvements, and it will likely excel in the long run, but for now, Planet Coaster 2 is an underwhelming ride.

Farming Simulator 25

After the failure of Farming Simulator 23 (at least on Nintendo Switch), Farming Simulator 25 marked a return for the franchise to consoles and PC. It shipped with extensive bugs, an annoying user interface, jarring physics, and multitudes of other issues that remain. That’s on top of the unoptimized performance on PC, which hinders the otherwise strong environmental effects and textures. Mods will likely make it a better experience over time but at this point, fans would appreciate a strong title out of the gate (which certainly applies to our next choice).

Starfield: Shattered Space

Starfield had its share of mixed impressions after launching last year and Shattered Space seemed like the perfect opportunity to address many issues while offering a fresh slate. However, the hand-crafted planet of Var’uun’kai delivered the most rudimentary content and barren surroundings to go with lackluster characters and story-telling. Even the intriguing gravity anomalies barely appear after a point.

A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead

I was excited about Stormind Games’ first-person horror, especially with how it leveraged the films and their mechanics. Unfortunately, A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is a hugely linear, highly scripted experience with bizarre AI, questionable design decisions, and a predictable story that fails to really leverage its endearing characters.

Concord

Sony’s biggest first-party failure in years, Concord was seemingly doomed from its first proper reveal, especially when the hero shooter elements became apparent. After a beta with abysmal numbers, it would launch to middling reviews and reportedly sold only 25,000 copies. Sony initially pulled the title from sale and shut down servers before eventually shuttering it and Firewalk Studio.

Rise of the Ronin

Director Fumihiko Yasuda revealed around June that Rise of the Ronin was Koei Tecmo’s best-selling game so far, with the publisher even reporting higher sales than Nioh. That’s all great, but the game itself fell short of what we expected in terms of open-world activities and storytelling. At least the combat remains enjoyable, and Team Ninja has provided some extensive post-launch content for free.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

The first Dragon Age title in ten years was bound to have astronomical expectations, especially with all the rumors and reports of reboots. Combat was sharp despite pivoting to a real-time hack-and-slash approach and the environments are gorgeous, without a doubt. It’s everything else that either whelmed or disappointed, from the uneven characterization and writing to the mission structure. Though it wasn’t BioWare’s worst, it’s far from being its best.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

Significant improvements over last year’s game don’t excuse Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 from disappointing in other ways. Despite a superior campaign, its story ultimately felt flat (and continued the same cliffhanger approach), while multiplayer fell short with its map design. Zombies is surprisingly good despite some balance issues, and while the overall experience classifies as “good,” it’s nowhere near the series’ heights.

Unknown 9: Awakening

There’s always some skepticism when a developer gets ahead itself and plans out an entire universe for its IP before the first game even launches. Unfortunately, Unknown 9: Awakening loaded its bland premise with dull writing and boring combat, while various bugs and performance issues weighed even heavier. Suffice it to say that with an all-time peak concurrent player count of 285 on Steam at launch, Unknown 9: Awakening failed to meet any expectations heaped on it.

MultiVersus

From promising platform fighter to being pulled and relaunching earlier this year in a worse form, MultiVersus has had quite the journey. It’s hard to pinpoint all the issues, be it the sheer lack of quality-of-life features at launch or how underwhelming Rifts felt after they finally went live, but above all else, the feel and fluidity from the open beta felt like it was missing. And unfortunately, Player First Games hasn’t been able to capture the magic ever since.

XDefiant

Initially revealed as part of the Tom Clancy series, XDefiant would become a standalone entity while still crossing over with the publisher’s various other titles. However, despite some responsive shooting, it couldn’t match the features and content of other free-to-play shooters at launch. Various issues like network performance also affected it, causing a sharp downturn. Maybe there’s still time to right the ship, but based on the company’s other live-service endeavors, XDefiant’s days could be numbered.

Outcast: A New Beginning

Developing a sequel to a niche title from the late 90s is unusual on its own, but perhaps Outcast: The New Beginning could cater to long-time fans. What it offered was a massive world with nothing exciting, loading up players with menial tasks and awful writing. Appealing as it may be for those seeking more old-school-style titles, A New Beginning felt more like an awkward continuation for a cult-classic series.

Though Firewalk Studios said it was looking at feedback to improve the experience, Sony made the call to permanently shelve the title and shut down the studio. In a Q&A session following the company’s earnings, COO and CFO Hiroki Totoki discussed (transcription via VGC) the title’s failure and how the studio is still “in the process of learning.”

“With regards to new IP, of course, you don’t know the result until you actually try it. So for us, for our reflection, we probably need to have a lot of gates, including user testing or internal evaluation, and the timing of such gates. And then we need to bring them forward, and we should have done those gates much earlier than we did.

“Also, we have a siloed organization, so going beyond the boundaries of those organizations in terms of development and also sales, I think that could have been much smoother.

“And then going forward, in our own titles and in third-party titles, we do have many different windows. And we want to be able to select the right and optimal window so that we can deploy them on our own platform without cannibalization, so that we can maximize our performance in terms of title launches. That’s all I have.”

Prior to this, Sadahiko Hayakawa, senior VP for finance and investor relations, acknowledged Concord shutting down and Helldivers 2 becoming a hit. He said the company 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.”

Sony said it will release “major single-player titles” yearly after Ghost of Yōtei (which launches in 2025). It’s also making “steady progress” with new titles and improvements to its “live service game processes.” Sony has live service titles like Bungie’s Marathon and Haven Studios’ Fairgame$ in the works, but it’s yet to announce other big single-player titles. Stay tuned for more details in the coming months.

Within a mere two weeks of launch, following disappointing sales and lukewarm critical reception, Concord was pulled offline, and everyone who bought the game was refunded. Firewalk and Sony’s position at the time was that they would put their heads together and try and figure out a different future for the game- which implied that maybe there was a future for the game. Many assumed that maybe it would return in the form of a free-to-play shooter, but really, the more you thought about it, the clearer it became that Concord was likely not going to get a second shot. Not after going down as one of the biggest and most high-profile first-party failures the games industry has ever seen.

Now, Sony has made the announcement that Firewalk Studios is shutting down, with mobile developer Neon (previously known as Savage Game Studios) also being shuttered, and it’s an absolute shame for just so many reasons. First and foremost, it’s a shame, of course, that multiple hundreds of people are losing their jobs, adding to the already several thousands of job cuts and layoffs this industry has seen over the last couple of years. It’s also a shame to see a new IP bombing this hard. Gaming, like any creative medium, desperately needs a constant influx of new ideas, so to see a major new first-party IP failing in this fashion is never great. You just know that a bunch of c-suite executives out there are going to decide based on Concord’s failure that maybe it might not be worth the risk to make big bets on completely new properties- which is the opposite of the direction we want to be headed in.

Beyond that, however, Firewalk Studios’ closure is also indicative of a much larger issue at PlayStation, and yet another glaring example of the cavalcade of poor decisions the company has made these last few years. The PS5 generation as a whole has seen Sony at its most frustrating in multiple ways. Yes, we have obviously had a number of great first-party games over the course of this generation, from Horizon Forbidden West and God of War Ragnarok to Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and Astro Bot, among others, but though the company has continued to deliver quality games, that has unfortunately gone hand-in-hand with disastrous mismanagement in other areas.

Sony acquired Firewalk Studios just about a year and a half ago, in April of 2023, prior to which it had already agreed to fund and publish the studio’s debut title, so clearly, it believed in Concord, or at least what it could become. Where that confidence came from, however, is a real headscratcher, because knowing what we now know of Concord, we can say with equal confidence that though it wasn’t without its own fair share of gameplay strengths, overall, it clearly wasn’t equipped for long-term success- or even short-term success, as it would turn out. No, it was a flawed $40 Overwatch clone in 2024, in a market that’s already flooded with similar live service shooters.

Banking so hard on Concord was in and of itself a mistake, then, but even more egregious is how Sony has chosen to deal with the fallout. Firewalk is being shuttered less than two years out from being acquired, hundreds of people are losing their jobs, and the game they spent years working on was allowed to remain online for just two weeks. And let’s not forget Neon Koi, the mobile studio that was acquired just a couple of years ago as part of Sony’s big mobile push- which, as per co-CEO Hermen Hulst, still remains an important part of the company’s strategy, in spite of the fact that Neon Koi is being shuttered, and its game cancelled. Looking at Concord and its fallout with Firewalk, it’s hard to think of examples of other publishers handling a rough situation with this kind of bumbling idiocy and lack of grace. Truly, PlayStation leadership has made an absolute mockery of itself.

Unsurprisingly, the conversation once again takes us back to Sony’s misguided live service ambitions. We’re barely a couple of games into those plans, and the list of failures is already long. Concord shelved, and Firewalk shuttered. The Last of Us Online cancelled, and Naughty Dog looking nowhere close to releasing a new game this generation. London Studios shuttered, and its live service game cancelled. Partnered AAA indie studio Deviation Games shuttered, before it could even announce its game. The only success Sony has seen in this arena so far has been Helldivers 2, which is more of a surprise success than one that the company worked for and planned around- and even that Sony has somehow managed to fumble with its PSN requirements on PC, illustrating just how to snap defeat from the jaws of victory.

You can, of course, understand from a financial perspective why Sony wanted other streams of revenue besides its big budget single-player titles, but Firewalk’s closure and the disastrous decision-making surrounding Concord are perfectly emblematic of how terribly the company has executed on those plans. In his internal email to PlayStation employees where he announced the shuttering of Firewalk and Neon Koi, PlayStation’s co-CEO Hermen Hulst touched on how the company will learn from the failings of Concord as it moves forward, but it’s hard to imagine this version of PlayStation having the capacity to learn more its mistakes.

This version of PlayStation is so entrenched in its idiotic vision for the future that it feels like it’s only ever going to make terrible decision after terrible decision. Like shuttering a studio that you should never have bought less than two years after buying it. Like laying off 900 people earlier in the year. Like spending over $300 million on Spider-Man 2, watching it enjoy widespread critical and commercial success, and then laying off a bunch of people at Insomniac anyway. Like investing multiple billions into Bungie, only to watch the studio’s condition go from bad to worse in the blink of an eye. Like adopting a collective policy of squeezing as much money out of your audience as possible, with increased prices for games, consoles, accessories, or subscription services. Like selling a pro console for $700 and refusing to sell it with a disc drive, or hell, even a stand.

And that’s just scratching the surface. This is the version of PlayStation we’re stuck with, and the Concord debacle is yet another stark reminder of that. Obviously, you want to hope that Sony will indeed learn from these huge and costly mistakes – and boy have these mistakes been huge and costly – but they had to make a string of mind-numbingly stupid decisions to find themselves in this position, leaving you to wonder whether they even have the capacity to know what the right path forward is.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.