Revealed just before the weekend (January 17, 2025 to be precise), the announcement of the cancellation of two new games at Sony Interactive Entertainment was widely commented on. And for good reason, it was the journalist Jason Schreier, always so well informed, who revealed that the projects of Bend Studio and Bluepoint Games will never see the light of day. Two so-called “live-service” titles which had therefore been designed to generate recurring revenue from players and which were therefore part of the 19 live-service games that the Japanese manufacturer had launched in 2022. If Jason Schreier’s investigation does not said not, it is on Bluesky that the journalist reveals that Bluepoint Games was working on a multiplayer-oriented God of War, while Bend Studio’s game remained mysterious. This is also a new blow for the Oregon-based company after the semi-failure of Days Gone and the fact that Sony Interactive Entertainment refused the development of Days Gone 2.
Since this weekend, Jeff Grub, another journalist who has reliable sources in the field, reported that employees of Bluepoint Games and Bend Studio learned the news of the cancellation of their games in the press, via the paper from Bloomberg, at the same time as everyone else. An unenviable situation and one that has undoubtedly generated a lot of frustration. That said, no worries for the future of these two studios, since in a press release, a spokesperson for Sonny declared that neither studio will be closed. “Bend and Bluepoint are highly accomplished teams who are valued members of the PlayStation Studios family, and we are working closely with each studio to determine what their next projects are.”declared the spokesperson, before adding that “that both games had been canceled ‘following a recent review’ and that PlayStation would continue to create online and single-player games.”
Over the past few years, PlayStation has invested heavily in live-service games, which are typically multiplayer games with microtransactions and other ways to extract money from players for months and years after launch. These games are risky ventures, but can be very lucrative when successful. Sony also has one of the biggest successes of its kind in the person of Helldivers 2, but also experienced a huge commercial failure with Concord, which according to some estimates, would have caused the Japanese company to lose nearly 400 million euros. . Sony has also canceled several other live-action games in recent years, including one based on Spider-Man, Bloomberg reported. Sony did not say whether the cancellations would result in job cuts, but that it will continue to “work closely with Bend and Bluepoint to determine what the next projects are and that it plans to do whatever is in place.” its power to ensure minimal commercial impact.” Finally, know that according to Jeff Grubs, it was the Concord fiasco that pushed Sony Interactive Entertainment to put an end to these two live-service projects. Action, reaction as they say…