Sony commits to single-player games in wake of Concord failure

Sony is not giving up on single-player games despite investing a lot into live-service games over the past few years, with plans to release at least one “major” single-player game every year “from next fiscal year onwards.”

The company released its Q2 2024 financial report on Friday, and there was a lot of good news for the video game division despite the high-profile failure of live-service title Concord. Earlier this year. The hero shooter only wracked up a few hundred players on Steam at launch — only 697 concurrent users at peak, according to SteamDB. Sony Interactive Entertainment took the game offline two weeks after launch before eventually sunsetting it and shutting down developer Firewalk Studios.

Sony has also been at the center of issues with Destiny 2 developer Bungie, which laid off more workers this year and restructured to create a new studio inside PlayStation.

However, single-player games have done well for Sony this year. While there haven’t been many first-party releases, the family platformer Astro Bot was a big hit for the company. According to the financials, it’s sold over 1.5 million copies over the first nine weeks. It even managed to convert users, with 37% of Astro Bot buyers not having bought a first-party game from Sony over the past two years. It’s also the highest-rated 2024 game on Metacritic at the time of this writing (tied with Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree). 

“We intend to build an optimal title portfolio during the current midrange plan period that combines single-player games, which are our strength, and which have a higher predictability of becoming hits due to our proven IP, with live service games that pursue upside while taking on a certain amount of risk upon release,” the presentation transcript reads.

So basically, Sony will continue to release big single-player games based on their established IP, like Ghost of Yotei, the sequel to Ghost of Tsushima, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, and Marvel’s Wolverine. While the company hasn’t officially announced other games that would fit in this category, fans can be on the lookout for another Final Fantasy 7 Remake entry, another God of War title, a game to cap off the Horizon trilogy, and more Marvel titles as reported in the Insomniac Games leak.

It’ll also retool its live-service strategy a bit, with the company “improving our live service game processes” and sharing lessons it learned from Concord‘s development and shutdown.

The company has also been riding sales of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. And while Helldivers 2 is a live-service shooter, it’s been a big hit for Sony on both PC and PlayStation 5.