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

Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida reveals he would have resisted Sony's controversial live service game push, citing inherent risks and potential misallocation of resources. Yoshida, who headed SIE Worldwide Studios from 2008 to 2019, shared his perspective with Kinda Funny Games amidst a period of significant challenges for PlayStation's live service titles.

While Helldivers 2 achieved phenomenal success, becoming the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game ever, other ventures like Concord proved disastrous. Concord, costing an estimated $200 million (according to Kotaku), failed spectacularly, lasting mere weeks before being shut down due to extremely low player counts. This followed the cancellation of Naughty Dog's The Last of Us multiplayer project and, more recently, two unannounced live service games.

Yoshida, reflecting on his 31-year tenure at Sony, stated that if he were in CEO Hermen Hulst's position, he would have advocated against the heavy investment in live service games at the time of their emergence. He emphasized the importance of balancing live service development with continued investment in successful single-player franchises. He acknowledged Sony's increased resource allocation for live service games after his departure, but maintained that the inherent risk in this highly competitive market should have prompted greater caution. The unexpected success of Helldivers 2 highlights the unpredictability of the industry, but Yoshida believes a more measured approach would have been preferable.

Sony's financial reports corroborate these concerns. President, COO, and CFO Hiroki Totoki admitted that lessons were learned from both Helldivers 2's success and Concord's failure. He pointed to the need for earlier user testing and internal evaluations, suggesting that Concord's problems should have been identified and addressed much sooner. Totoki also cited Sony's "siloed organization" and Concord's unfortunate launch window, potentially leading to market cannibalization, as contributing factors.

Senior vice president Sadahiko Hayakawa echoed these sentiments, emphasizing the valuable lessons learned from both successes and failures, and the intention to share these insights across studios to improve development management and post-launch content support. The future PlayStation live service strategy aims for a balanced portfolio, combining the proven success of single-player titles with calculated risks in the live service arena. Several live service games remain in development, including Marathon, Horizon Online, and Fairgame$.