Lego Horizon not selling well is neither here nor there. They have a relationship with Lego and Lego wanted them to make a Horizon game. And they figured they'd explore it. 

if anything, it only shows that their non-live service games can also not be winners. 

I doubt it. As you said, they're probably just cutting projects that aren't hitting their internal goals, nothing more and nothing less. Neither of these 2 games were even formally announced, just that the teams were working on something. 

I don't even think there's any cause for concern here outside of Bend and BluePoint seemingly having worked on live service titles instead of the expected SP games. Horizon MP is still rumoured to be coming. Fairgame$ is still coming. Marathon is coming. if those 3 work out then these other cancellations will mean nothing in the grand scheme of Sony's live service push.

This is possibly the worst Playstation news I've heard in a really long time.

Its one thing to want to do a big push into live service games using new teams and/or teams that have decided to go that route themselves (Helldivers, Concord, etc.) Yes concord was a failure but that is the game that Firewalk Studios wanted to make (or so it seems).

Its a completely different issue, when you take studios that previously made really good single player games and give them +-5 years to work on a live service game that then gets cancelled. There is so much wrong with this, I feel like someone at the top should be fired. What idiot gives the go ahead for these projects? What idiot overseas the development of these games for so many years after the previous release from the studio and doesn't intervene sooner?

I never expected PS to make such a boneheaded decision post PS3 launch.

Helldivers, Concord, Marathon, Destiny, Fairgame$, Last of Us Live service, Horizon Live service....those are the ones we knew about, surely thats enough of an investment into a new area for a company? I mean any company wanting to expand into a new sub genre would surely tread carefully and strategically. But it seems that the strategy was just to literally make as much of these type of games as possible and hope that one makes it really big. Terrible logic here.

And now to find out there were two additional live service games in development by previously SP studios. This is rough.

@bolded, I think this is a really optimistic take. I think the main cause for concern, is that typically the Sony fanbase have been on the platform primarily for high quality SP game experiences. Its the backbone of the PS3 comeback and the PS4's success. Allocating resources to expand into live services is not an issue, if it has no material impact on the SP game experiences and release cadence. Up to now, it didnt seem to be too impactful, but with this latest news, its clear that outside of the games thats been announced, Sony has no other PS5 SP games coming. So there has indeed been an impact.

With regards to the live services game successes, I cant see the Horizon MP game becoming a massive hit, HFW is already showing a dip in the franchise popularity, I am not sure how they plan to take that audience and push live service/MP its not the right audience. Fairgame$ is looking like it will be cancelled soon after its released similar to concord. Marathon has a chance of the success that Sony want, but I mean this already costed them 3 billion. None of these decisions make any sense, and they certainly dont make financial success except in that one super rare scenario where they make a fortnight level franchise by some miracle.

I do think if it gets cancelled that the failure of the Lego game could potentially be a factor in that decision cause it is a bad sign for the appeal of the Horizon IP outside of the main games. The lack of interest compared to The Skywalker Saga is very stark even when taking the better reception of that into account, like people barely cared when it was revealed to the extent that the main discussion surrounding it was it getting a Switch port. There's also that the VR game didn't make much of a splash so the IP likely having poor spin-off potential is a fair assessment I'd say.

Now this isn't to say that they should cancel it, it's probably worth releasing at least one of these live service spin-offs to see how it performs but I don't have high hopes for it.

Sony still has quite a few single player titles to announce. 

We know SMS have a new IP in the works, Firesprite is supposedly working on Until Dawn 2, Housemarque is going to have something else before the end of the gen, there's the unannounced Venom game from the leaks, and Polyphony will likely have another Gran Turismo out in a few years. And there's still XDEV partnerships like the Project Carbon or Project Ooze. 

Perhaps. 

Oh man, I love throwing some Frank's hot sauce into some hienz baked beans. 😋 

It will take a long time to undo the damage of the Jim Ryan years, so better to pull the plug now.

They don't have other upcoming games announced. 

ND are seemingly working on a new Unchartered with TLOU3 afterwards, on top of Intergalatic. Cory's new game for SMS is most likely SP. Suckerpunch have GoY coming out. Insomniac's next game is Wolverine, with rumours that SM3 and a new Ratchet will follow. Guerilla definitely has Horizon 3 in the works. FireSprite are heavily rumoured to be doing Until Dawn 2. MM and and HM are up in the air for now. This of course doesn't take into account colloboration efforts like Death Stranding 2 and Lost Soul Aside, with Sony rumoured to be working on a handful of smaller titles as well.

Of course, as we know, rumours don't pan out as we expect them. But it's not like everything we know is confirmed is just live service. 

And can't say I agree with the assessment here on Horizon. What we learnt from the Insomniac leak is that HFW sales were knee-capped by it being released on PS+ so soon after launch. Sony has the data to prove this, and we know this as well. There's a reason why we haven't seen any other first party game hit PS+ as fast as HFW did because of the knock-on sales. And everything surrounding MS and GamePass should make this incredibly obvious: games on subscription services have negative effects on the actual sales of said game. So, using HFW as an example of franchise popularity I think is a fool's errand. And of course, the remaster for HZD debuted in top 10 in UK. 

As for Marathon and Fairgame$, I doubt either of these are being cancelled as I would imagine they are much further along and, more importantly, officially announced games. I doubt Sony's ventures into live service are ending, they're just reassessing them with more scrutiny now. 

Lego games are not even big sellers to begin with, and I think most of us all agreed upon announcement that there was little to no overlap between Horizon and Lego fanbases to begin with. If they want to explore expanding the IP then they can do that: after all there isn't just the 3rd mainline title in development, there's the MP title, a mobile MP title and a movie. 

I'm not even sure why you compare Horizon Lego to Star Wars: the latter is legacy IP that is still incredibly popular today, and the game itself contains all 9 movies in it, Horizon was just the first game. 

And who actually thought the VR game was going to make a splash? It's a lunch title for an expensive set of hardware that requires an expensive PS5 to buy first.

I'm sorry, but these critiques into Horizon are incredibly reaching. If the MP game gets cancelled then so be it, but a Monster Hunter-like where you fight robo dinosaurs/ animals has a lot of potential.