Sony is doubling down on live service games in a big way as the company recently invested another $2 billion into the research and development of those titles. While PlayStation remains committed to releasing its strong single-player offerings, the company has also shifted into live service games in recent years. The PlayStation Showcase that took place in May this year offered a look at a few live service titles currently in development at its first-party studios and now, Sony is digging deeper into the model.
As reported by Nikkei Asia, Sony is investing around $2.13 billion into further research and development of live service games as well as technology related to “extended reality.” The company is banking heavily on its future portfolio of live service games to succeed, purchasing Destiny developer Bungie to work on the upcoming extraction shooter, Marathon, as well as other studios that have experience in making live service projects.
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Sony’s “extended reality” investment could be related to PS VR2, which launched earlier this year. However, despite boasting some impressive VR technology, fans felt that the headset failed to offer any compelling first-party titles that can be considered system-sellers. Perhaps Sony is aware of this and beefing up its efforts to deliver more high-quality first-party VR games in the future.
Meanwhile, Sony’s first-party teams under the PlayStation Studios family are currently hard at work on developing more single-player titles that PlayStation is known for. Insomniac Games is working on two PS5 exclusives: Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and Marvel’s Wolverine. Meanwhile, it’s believed that Sucker Punch Productions has been quietly working on the sequel to Ghost of Tsushima, while Naughty Dog might’ve already begun development on The Last of Us Part III.
This isn’t even counting the exclusivity deals currently in place with Square Enix that recently saw Final Fantasy XVI launch as a PS5 exclusive. The highly anticipated upcoming Final Fantasy VII Rebirth will also be exclusive to PS5 at launch, though it’s possible that both titles could release on other platforms in the future.
Source: Nikkei Asia
