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

Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida revealed he would have resisted Sony's controversial push into live-service games. Yoshida, President of SIE Worldwide Studios from 2008 to 2019, told Kinda Funny Games that Sony acknowledged the inherent risks involved in this investment.

Yoshida's comments arrive amidst a turbulent period for PlayStation's live-service ventures. While Arrowhead's Helldivers 2 achieved remarkable success, becoming the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game ever with 12 million copies sold in just 12 weeks, other live-service titles faced cancellations or disastrous launches.

Concord stands as a significant setback, one of PlayStation's biggest video game failures. The game lasted mere weeks before being shut down due to extremely low player numbers. Sony subsequently canceled the game entirely and dissolved its development studio. Kotaku reported the initial development cost was approximately $200 million, a sum insufficient to fully fund development and not inclusive of IP rights or Firewalk Studios acquisition.

This followed the cancellation of Naughty Dog's The Last of Us multiplayer game and, more recently, two unannounced live-service titles—a God of War project at Bluepoint and another at Bend Studio (Days Gone developers). Yoshida, departing Sony after 31 years, shared his perspective in the Kinda Funny Games interview, stating that as the current SIE Studio Business Group CEO, Hermen Hulst, he would have advocated against the live-service strategy's early adoption.

“Managing the budget, I allocated funds for game development,” Yoshida explained. “If the company considered that direction, diverting resources from another God of War or single-player title to solely focus on live-service games wouldn't have made sense. However, after I left and Hermen took over, the company provided more resources. They didn't stop single-player game development; instead, they added resources for live-service games as an experiment. They knew the risk; success in this competitive genre is unlikely. Despite this, they gave Hermen the resources to try. I think that's great, and hopefully, some games will succeed. Helldivers 2's success was unexpected. You can't plan success in this industry. If I were in Hermen's position, I probably would have resisted that direction. Maybe that's why they removed me!”

Sony's president, COO, and CFO, Hiroki Totoki, acknowledged lessons learned from both Helldivers 2's record-breaking launch and Concord's failure during a recent financial call. Regarding Concord, Totoki cited the need for earlier user testing and internal evaluation. He admitted, “Currently, we are still in the process of learning. For new IP, you don't know the result until you try. We need more gates, including user testing, and we should have implemented them much earlier.”

Totoki also pointed to Sony's “siloed organization” and Concord's release window, potentially causing market cannibalization (its launch coincided with Black Myth: Wukong). He stated, “We have a siloed organization, so going beyond those organizational boundaries in development and sales could have been smoother. We need to select the right release window to maximize performance without cannibalization.”

Sony senior vice president for finance and IR, Sadahiko Hayakawa, compared Helldivers 2 and Concord's launches, highlighting the lessons learned that would be shared across the company. He said, “We launched two live-service games this year. Helldivers 2 was a huge hit, while Concord was shut down. We learned a lot from both. We intend to share lessons from successes and failures across studios, including title development management and adding expanded content after release. We intend to build an optimum title portfolio combining single-player games—our strengths—with live-service games that pursue upside while accepting risk.”

Several PlayStation live-service games are still in development, including Bungie's Marathon, Guerrilla's Horizon Online, and Haven Studio's Fairgame$.