Sony and its expansion into the live service model have been a poor fit so far.

Game development is no easy task, even for in-house studios, and when trying to move an IP to a new game model, the challenges multiply. It is not a manageable mountain to climb for Guerrilla Games or Naughty Dog, as both studios want to expand into live service with Horizon and The Last of Us, respectively. The only problem is that we don’t know much about either of them, and Naughty Dog recently wrote that they need more time to develop the project (perhaps Bungie, a pioneer of the live service model, has not given a good enough assessment of the studio’s progress with it so far).

The Last of Us’ standalone multiplayer was rumored in 2019 when Naughty Dog confirmed that The Last of Us Part II would not have a multiplayer component. Since then, the team has been developing the project, which we’ll call The Last of Us: Factions for lack of an official name, announced at last year’s Summer Game Fest by Naughty Dog and Sony, promising we’ll hear more about it later in 2023. Two-thirds of a year has passed since then, and it’s still nowhere to be seen.

Guerrilla’s situation is different: in December, the studio confirmed via a job posting that it was developing an online game in the Horizon universe, and in July, studio director Jan-Bart van Beek said it was a cooperative game. Neither Guerrilla nor Sony Interactive Entertainment has officially declared any more than that.

Suppose neither studio is saying more about their game to avoid complaints about quality. In that case, the silence is understandable. Still, the two leading studios at PlayStation Studios have to give it their all, as Sony will not be able to position themselves in the live service model if all we see are forgettable titles that are coming and going within a year (such was the case with Square Enix’s release of Babylon’s Fall from PlatinumGames…).

Source: GameRant