The live service market seems to be in crisis: is PlayStation too late to the party?

According to a series of market analysts questioned by GamesIndustry.biz on short and medium term trends in video games, the The live service securities market would be saturated at this point, which should lead to a contraction in production of this type and perhaps to a return of more traditional models. This is only a prediction, but it comes from good foundations considering that these are analyzes carried out by specialists from Niko Partners, Midia Research, Kantan Games, Ampere Analysis and Newzoo, based on data collected over the last few years. According to these analysts, live service games that already exist or are arriving soon will continue to play a fundamental role in the market, but it could become increasingly difficult for newcomers to establish themselves in this area.

In essence, the big fish will continue to dominate, but the general trend of new projects will be more balanced: the race for GaaSIn short, it should slow down significantly, shifting attention back to the development of premium games. This is not so much due to a real market crisis, since live services will probably continue to dominate the landscape in terms of revenues, but because the offer is heading towards saturation and there seems to be no room for new alternatives beyond of the relatively few titles capable of establishing themselves with the public. Many new projects will arrive, probably with mixed success, but in 2024 we will be far from the enthusiasm shown between 2020 and 2022 for this type of game, with teams and publishers who will probably opt for a more balanced approach between different types of production, without force the hand too much on creating additional games with extended support.

Did Sony move too late and in an uncoordinated manner?

Within this situation, the condition of Sony stands out, which as we know has given a notable turning point in the direction of live services to PlayStation Studios. It is true that Jim Ryan assured, already at the time, that traditional and single player titles will still remain an important pillar of production, but it is also true that there are 12 live service games expected to arrive over the next few years, and the The idea is that the company moved too late and with too much haste in this direction, given that the games in question could arrive at a time of decisive regression for this type of product. The problem is that, with the current timing of videogame development, such moves should be foreseen well in advance, otherwise it is easy to find oneself clearly behind the market trends, which with rare exceptions is always rather fickle.

Sony has always focused heavily on cinematic single-player experiences, but realized that it couldn't go ahead with those alone, also because the development costs they have become difficult to sustain in the long run, as also emerged from the recent leaks on Insomniac Games. A strong point has turned into a potentially weak element, given that excessive specialization on a single genre (even with some different meanings) is never advisable with a view to continuous expansion and even more so with the emerging need to cut costs and manage resources wisely. This has made the mass transition to the development of multiplayer, online or live service games a sort of unnatural and forced maneuver, forcing changes to the development environment now built on specific and different know-how. Not for nothing, the sudden maxi-acquisition of Bungie for almost 4 billion dollars was driven largely by this need to introduce elements experienced in the sector within PlayStation Studios.

The negative consequences of this drastic maneuver can be seen in the cancellation of The Last of Us Online, which in fact led Naughty Dog to waste time and resources on a failing project, in addition to the alleged cancellations of other projects as well as assorted problems such as those that seem having hit Deviation Games, which also seemed to be at the center of a project of enormous importance for the future of PlayStation. If we add to all this the changed landscape of the videogame market, in which live service titles may no longer have the push they had a few years ago, it is clear that Sony's move may have been somewhat risky.