Sony Interactive Entertainment's 2024 was a bizarre mix of dizzying heights and pitch-black failure

Entering 2024, none of us were prepared for the downright crazy year Sony was about to embark on. Sure, the calendar was atypically empty - especially when it came to internally developed single-player games - but mostly it looked dull. Wolverine on the horizon, some live service titles in the form of Fairgames, Marathon and Concord and then a trio of externally developed games - Rise of the Ronin, Stellar Blade and Helldivers II - to fill the first party gap. As I said: Boring and empty.

When the first release hit the streets, however, the tone changed. Helldivers II was released to excellent reviews and sky-high player numbers, and for a few months it looked like Sony's large-scale live service course correction would pay off. This was welcome news, especially after The Last of Us Online's cancellation in December 2023.

Rise of the Ronin and Stellar Blade followed in the months after. The former was a somewhat underwhelming experience that ranks among Team Ninja's most forgettable games in recent memory, while the South Korean developed Stellar Blade fired up the critics and commentary tracks somewhat more with its shamelessly entertaining combination of Nier: Automata and Soulslikes with a protagonist whose attire seemed to draw more headlines than all the game's other elements combined.

Thus, the first half of the year went by without a single release (other than the annual MLB: The Show 24) from Sony's own studios. Again, not the most exciting.

On the last day of spring, however, all that changed. A rumoured showcase turned out to be a State of Play, and it was opened and closed by the two titles that would prove to be polar opposites in every way. Opener Concord was met with universal negativity. Trend-chasing and out of touch with the times was the criticism, and its status as a live service didn't help either.

Closer Astro Bot, with its 'gameplay first' approach and ultra-charming entrance on stage, symbolised the complete opposite reaction in a strikingly symbolic way.

The two games were released just a few weeks apart, but tragicomically, Concord had already shut down when Astro Bot wowed the critics, including yours truly. Concord's reviews were pretty average, but it soon became clear that the audience wasn't there. As in not at all, not at all. The game peaked at just under 700 players on Steam. An almost unheard of low number, so Sony took out the scythe and promptly shut down the brutally expensive game. Brutal is too modest a word in this case.

Astro Bot was a completely different story. Sales figures are modest at this point, but with an Opencritic rating of 95%, user reviews at the same level and a recent Game Awards win under its belt, there is no doubt that it is a triumph for Sony on most parameters. It points back to an era in Sony's history that many miss. The good old days when gameplay came first and creativity trumped insane production values.

However, the wave Astro Bot rode on did not reach the final release of the year. Lego Horizon Adventures was a slightly bizarre idea on paper, which worked well enough in practice, but never rose above the average, which is reflected in the preliminary indications of the sales figures.

In this way, Sony's year ended on a bit of a sour note. If the two internally developed games are any indication of the future, the way forward seems obvious. And it's telling that we haven't seen anything from either Marathon or Fairgames, while Sony announced two large-scale single-player games from two of their highest-profile studios in the dying months of the year. However, they both taste more like PS4 Sony than the PS2 Sony that Astro Bot represented.

With Concord's resounding failure and numerous cancellations, the big announced shift to live service seems to have been, if not called off, at least toned down considerably. However, there are still projects in the pipeline, and 2025 is likely to see new developments in the saga.

For now, however, the focus seems to be on bringing the more classic prestige titles that Sony had so much success with in the PS4 era back into the limelight. Wolverine, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, Kojima Productions' Death Stranding 2: On the Beach and Ghost of Yotei are a strong four-leaf clover, with the latter two scheduled to land next year.

This is promising enough, because on paper it's a strong four-leaf clover that we don't know much about yet. But for me it also tastes a little too much like classic Sony prestige. I hope that Sony is inspired by the success of Astro Bot (and not deterred by the apparent failure of Lego Horizon Adventures), and that in the future, they consider more titles that perhaps don't push photorealism and expand the boundaries of cinematic storytelling, but instead focus on creative concepts and good old-fashioned fun. Because in 2024, that's what saved the year from a software disaster.