Shinobi said Bluepoint had grown quite a bit. 

They must not have updated their LinkedIn. Still showing 80 and that was as recently as 2023. Even if doubled in just a year, that’s still a small studio. About the size of Media Molecule. 

I was expecting to be disappointed at Bluepoint working on a God of War game. But working on a live service God of War game is so much worse. After Demon's Souls Remake, I was really hopeful for their next game. I loved it. It's my top 3 Sony games this gen with God of War Ragnarok and Astro Bot. I'm so disappointed.

I'm also baffled that Sony had them working on a live service game. I totally understood Sony wanting to make live service games, but I'm just blown away that it just seems to get worse and worse as time goes on. A lot of their live service stuff came from new studios (Bungie, Firesprite, Haven, Firewalk). I understood that strategy, even if it felt excessive to me. I thought Bluepoint was a safe studio to have making single player games. 

And I was really hoping by now, that we'd be done hearing about the live service disaster.  

Even if you thought you had to make like 15 live service games, how do you pass over so many of your strong single player studios to do that? Especially for a company that practically built it's fanbase the past few gens on single player games. Sony's first party was very strong during the PS4 gen, and a lot of that credit goes to their single player studios (Uncharted, The Last of Us, Horizon, God of War, Days Gone, Bloodborne, Spider-Man, Ghost of Tsushima). 

I'm getting overly dramatic here, but why on Earth did they feel like they needed to spit on that fanbase? 

To add onto that list: Firesprite had an Action Shooter of some kind, that got cancelled.

Concord [cancelled]
Unannounced God of War game [cancelled]
The Last of Us multiplayer [cancelled]
Spider-Man 2 multiplayer [cancelled]
Bend Studio multiplayer [cancelled]
Twisted Metal (Firesprite) [cancelled]
London Studio's co-op game (studio closed) [cancelled]
Deviation Games' MP game [cancelled]
"Payback" (3rd person Destiny spin-off from Bungie) [cancelled]

I feel like this is still missing some games. 

Helldivers 2 came out and was a good success.

Fairgame$ is still in development.

Marathon, I think there's another Bungie project or two. 

The hopefully positive point here though is that Sony continues to make a big reversal. 

One thing that especially sucks is that we were right at the time where Bend and Bluepoint would’ve shown off their next games. It’ll have been 6 and 5 years respectively since their last games.

Maybe not have released but at least publicly shown off.

I still cant believe Live service and God of War was used in the same sentence/idea.

I wonder how that even came into fruition. 

Its not like Bluepoint started work on a live service God of War shortly after Demon's Souls. They helped out SMS with Ragnarok and moved onto a multiplayer project in 2023. Sony didn't acquire them until sometime in 2021. Were they just sitting idly by after the PS5 launch? 

At least Bluepoint released something during the PS5 generation. 

Bend is going to be MIA until the PS6. And to think they turned down Days Gone 2 and Uncharted for a live service game.

The legacy of Jimbo will be one of the darkest stains in PlayStations history, ain’t no defending what he’s done for even the most hardcore Sony fans. Can’t believe after all this time Bluepoint, a studio that’s a masterclass in remaking games was making a fucking live service game. That’s 2 more studios not releasing a game for the rest of the gen …

hm I can see it. You got the MP game in Ascension, you got the rouge-lite in Ragnarok. 

I would imagine that Bluepoint was building the game based on Ragnarok assets. 

Demon's released in 2020. Ragnarok was announced the same year. And it was Covid period. I suppose it makes sense. 

They were MIA during the PS3 too (not counting the Vita). Just disastrous management at that studio. I completely forgot they were on an Uncharted title, an IP they even had prior experience with. Definitely not the time for Bend to do something like this.

I know everyone likes to point to Jim Ryan and blame him for everything, but he's not the only one making these decisions. The actual studios themselves would've had a hand in the decision making. 

What's important is that these studios move forward in as positive a manner as possible. Unfortunately, there might be some fallout.

Damn, Bluepoint had the GoW IP and they wanted it to be a live service?

Hopefully it also means they had all the assets being used to also make the rumored GoW Remake for this year.