PlayStation Legend Shuhei Yoshida 'Would've Tried to Resist' Sony's Live Service Push

Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida revealed he would have resisted Sony's controversial push into live-service gaming. Yoshida, President of SIE Worldwide Studios from 2008 to 2019, told Kinda Funny Games that Sony acknowledged the inherent risks in this investment.

His comments arrive amidst a turbulent period for PlayStation's live-service ventures. While Arrowhead's *Helldivers 2* achieved remarkable success, becoming the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game ever with 12 million copies sold in just 12 weeks, other live-service titles faced cancellations or disastrous launches.

Sony's *Concord*, for instance, stands as one of PlayStation's biggest gaming failures, lasting mere weeks before being shut down due to extremely low player numbers. The game's developer was subsequently closed, representing a significant financial loss. According to a Kotaku report, the initial development deal for *Concord* was approximately $200 million—a sum insufficient to fully fund its development, and not including IP rights or the acquisition of Firewalk Studios.

This failure followed the cancellation of Naughty Dog's *The Last of Us* multiplayer game and, recently, two unannounced live-service titles—a *God of War* project at Bluepoint and another at Bend Studio (developers of *Days Gone*).

In his Kinda Funny Games interview, Yoshida, who recently left Sony after 31 years, stated that if he were current SIE Studio Business Group CEO Hermen Hulst, he would have pushed back against the live-service strategy. He explained his budgetary responsibilities and the potential conflict between allocating funds to live-service games versus established franchises like *God of War*.

Yoshida acknowledged Sony's increased resource allocation after his departure, emphasizing that the company didn't halt single-player game development. He highlighted the inherent risk in the highly competitive live-service market, but praised Sony's approach of providing resources to explore this area. He attributed *Helldivers 2*'s unexpected success to the unpredictable nature of the industry and expressed hope for the overall strategy's eventual success. He concluded by suggesting his resistance to the live-service direction might have contributed to his departure.

In a recent financial call, Sony's president, COO, and CFO, Hiroki Totoki, discussed lessons learned from both *Helldivers 2*'s success and *Concord*'s failure. Totoki cited the need for earlier user testing and internal evaluations in *Concord*'s development. He admitted Sony was still learning and emphasized the need for more development gates and earlier implementation. He also pointed to Sony's "siloed organization" and *Concord*'s release window (close to *Black Myth: Wukong*) as contributing factors to the game's failure.

Sony senior vice president for finance and IR, Sadahiko Hayakawa, further compared the launches of *Helldivers 2* and *Concord*, emphasizing the sharing of lessons learned across studios, focusing on development management and post-launch content scaling. He highlighted Sony's intention to maintain a balanced portfolio of single-player and live-service titles, leveraging established IPs for predictable success while managing the risk associated with live-service games.

Several PlayStation live-service games remain in development, including Bungie's *Marathon*, Guerrilla's *Horizon Online*, and Haven Studio's *Fairgame*.