A recent announcement from game developer Naughty Dog has confirmed the cancellation of the highly anticipated multiplayer game based on The Last of Us. The cancellation comes after earlier reports of delays in the development of the project for the PlayStation 5.
The live service space is so crowded now that it would be difficult for even Naughty Dog to break into it successfully. Not to mention the fatigue around live service games lately. They made the right call by not trend chasing.
I’m glad I’m not the exec who has to explain to the Sony board what exactly they purchased bungie for. Seems like it has been a total debacle from a business standpoint.
Forcing a top tier single player adventure studio to work on live-service tripe was an awful idea and the world is better for its failure.
I suppose it is a bit circuitous. One of the stated reasons for the bungie buy was to help Sony studios build up their live service offerings. Bungie having built that skill set with destiny products. Bungie since then seems to have badly fumbled destiny and the other 1st party studies are all bailing on the live service projects that bungie was supposed to help them with.
The pivot to live service has gone poorly for Sony. Bungie was a key part of the strategy.
But, if you like cinematic single player adventures, it’s nice to see this fall apart. It would be very sad to watch naughty dog turn into a content conveyor to feed a live service game.
Naughty Dog and Bungie are currently in the exact opposite situations which is interesting to me. ND realized taking on a live service game would prevent them from doing anything else and decided not to pursue. Bungo thought adding in two separate games into their offering in addition to massive destiny 2 was a good idea. I think we’re seeing the results of that stupid decision.
Highly anticipated by whom? My understanding was that most people thought it was a stupid cash-grab into the live-service genre. Or has my understanding been wrong?
That's why they decided to kill it, but people who were interested in it had some reason for hope.
On the PS3 it was basically a team death match with the mechanics of the game. That's all it needed to be and it was fun.
Now people get angry if the game doesn't have support with content updates for at least 3 years and if it's not monetized then there's no point for the publisher to do it (and the inclusion of it angers the players). It's rough.
However in the case of the PC version, I think it's for the best. If Sony wanted it to be profitable beyond the games price point, that means mtx. If there is development happening on mtx then it's budget not going into the development of the game, which considering the state of the game that did get released... Well...
Now people get angry if the game doesn't have support with content updates for at least 3 years
I mean, have you seen the state game studios are releasing games in now? It's like 3+ years of updates just to get it to the place it was supposed to be at release.
Add comment