Qwark said:
Their own graphs they are investing less in traditional content in 2023 than they did in 2019. The traditional being the 200 million+ single player games. They also want to release a lot Live Service games the next few years. So that they have 12 up and running in 2025. In 2025 and onward their investments in Live service games will be bigger than in Live Service games. Considering they have only so many studios it's fairly safe to assume that some (not recently acquired studios) are working on a Life Service game, instead or an AAA SP game. We only know of 3 Live games in development so far and PlayStation sees MLB already as a Live Service game. So that's 8 more Live Service games to announce and release, the next three years. |
You may want to look at those graphs again. Sony significantly increasing their funding for multiplayer games, doesn't mean less investment in single player games, and surely doesn't mean they are abandoning single player games. It means the majority of their M&A budget will be going towards live service/GaaS titles.
Sony has stated they have over 25+ games in development at their first party studios back in 2021. If they achieve their goal of 10 - 12 live service games releasing by 2026, that would mean the majority of games in development would still be single player titles.
Its safe to assume that some of Sony's legacy studios will be working on live service games, but its ridiculous to claim they're abandoning AAA gaming, especially with journalists like Jason Schreier writing articles about how Sony is shifting towards AAA development, and forums like this criticizing Sony for going all in for AAA development.