People were sick of live-service games a few years ago, and so they're really tired of them by now. The odd success will sneak through, emboldening those working on new live-service games to keep on trucking, but we're seeing a lot of flops, too. Something Sony is all too familiar with, following the historical bomb that was Concord. Even more successful releases, like Marathon, have struggled to generate massive player counts.
However, Sony isn't giving up on live-service entirely. Speaking to Famitsu (via Eurogamer), Sony Interactive Entertainment president Hideaki Nishino confirmed the platform owner would continue with live-service titles to attract users on a "global level."
"We would like to continue to revitalize the market through both first-party and third-party content. We are not only focusing on promoting new titles, but also considering what can be done with older titles in the medium to long term," Nishino said. He also mentioned the upcoming launch of Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls, a game that people may not traditionally consider live-service, but definitely fits into the space with multiplayer elements, season passes, and more.
When asked whether the strategy is the same as before, Nishino said: "That's right. With live service games, it's important to continuously provide something. The genre itself is relatively new, and I think many people are trying various things, so we also want to continue to take on challenges within that context." It's doubtful he's as fond of live-service as Jim Ryan was, as there's no plans to have ten games sucking up people's time and money before 2030, for example, but it seems Nishino isn't quite willing to call Sony's live-service experiment a failure just yet.