MADRID, November 8 (Portaltic/EP) –
Sony says it has learned from its live-service games released this year, Concord and Helldivers 2, and will use those lessons to create a catalog that blends the genre with single-player games.
Sony President, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki acknowledged Concord’s failure during a call following the presentation of its fiscal 2024 second-quarter results.
Concord is one of two live-service games the tech company has launched this year, but it hasn’t even been active for a month due to aspects of the game and its initial launch “not being the success” Sony expected.
Another game, Helldivers 2, was a “great success” for the tech company, and Totoki states that they both “gained experience and learned a lot.”
“We intend to share the lessons learned from our successes and failures across all of our studios, including in the area of managing title development, as well as continually adding expanded content and scaling the service post-launch to strengthen our development management system.” – the manager explained.
Totoki shared its plans for the current financial period aimed at “creating an optimal portfolio of games” combining single-player and live-service games.
In this regard, the manager noted that single-player games are his “strength” and that they have a better chance of success due to their intellectual property. In contrast, with live-service games such as massively multiplayer online shooters, the company recognizes that it is taking on “a certain amount of risk at launch.”
Sony has already explained on the occasion of Concord’s closure that the PvP first-person shooter genre “is a competitive space that is constantly evolving,” according to Sony Interactive Entertainment Studio Business Group CEO Hermen Hulst.
The closure of this game also meant the closure of the studio that developed it, Firewalk Studios. In line with what Totoki has now expressed, Hulst also said that they will use the “lessons learned” to further improve their real-time gaming capabilities to “achieve future growth” in this area.