Sony is postponing no fewer than six games that were initially scheduled for release on PC and PlayStation consoles over the next two and a half years. At the same time, they plan to raise the quality of the games to an even higher level.

Sony is delaying half a dozen PlayStation games that were initially scheduled to hit the market in the next two and a half years. The now-delayed titles are all part of a double-digit batch that Sony has made live, which the company first confirmed for February 2022.

At the time, the gaming giant said it wanted to launch at least ten titles using the games-as-a-service (GAAS) business model by the end of the 2025 fiscal year, which ends in March 2026.

PlayStation Studios head Hermen Hulst later mentioned that the company’s short-term GAAS schedule has expanded to 12 titles starting in October 2022. Meanwhile, he also promised that all of these abundant PlayStation live service games will also be released on PC on day one.

Sony now only wants to release 6 PlayStation Live Service games until March 2026

The number of planned releases has now been cut in half, as Sony Group COO Hiroki Totoki suggested during the company’s latest earnings report. While the official avoided using the word “delay” outright, he said that Sony is currently working to figure out when it will release half of the initially promised batch of GAAS titles. Meanwhile, VGC reports that Totoki has agreed to launch the remaining six games by the beginning of 2026.

So his comments suggest that the original plan to release all 12 upcoming live service games over the next two-and-a-half years has changed somewhat.

Exactly which titles were delayed from the company’s first major GAAS package is unclear. Most of them have not even been announced to date. The two live service titles Sony has confirmed so far are Naughty Dog’s multiplayer spin-off The Last of Us and Bungie’s extraction shooter Marathon. Totoki hinted that these delays were caused by standards concerns. He stressed that Sony cannot compromise on “game quality” as part of its GAAS push.

Despite the setback, the gaming giant’s overall strategy remains unchanged. Totoki confirmed that live service games remain integral to Sony’s long-term plans. PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan has previously stated that the company intends to pursue GAAS offerings in addition to, rather than at the expense of, AAA’s single-player experiences.

Whether such an ambitious diversification can be achieved without significant acquisitions like the 2022 Bungie deal remains to be seen.

After all, securing long-term support for a live-as-a-service game is often as challenging as developing it. Suppose it is not even more difficult. This can also be seen from the fact that Blizzard’s own president is voicing the lack of patience of players these days. Even companies with much more GAAS experience than Sony sometimes struggle to meet fans’ expectations of quality and quantity.

Source: VGC