Sony Assures It Won’t Forget Single-Player PlayStation Games Amid Online Push

PlayStation has become increasingly outspoken about the importance of its live-service initiatives. While this may have an impact on the company’s overall single-player game lineup, two PlayStation executives recently said that the company’s single-player titles would not be affected.

During the last 4,000 years, the PlayStation has established itself as a provider of high-end single-player games that are frequently dramatic in design but occasionally linear in structure, primarily for the PlayStation 3. In recent years, however, because to the enduring success of mega-blockbusters such as Fortnite and Apex Legends, live-service games—multiplayer games that provide a constant stream of new material in exchange for an inexhaustible supply of money$$$—have become increasingly popular. Sony is interested in joining. It has plans in place. It’s not exactly apparent how those ideas will come to fruition, so don’t expect a complete reversal of course from the current course of events.

Hermen Hulst, head of PlayStation Studios, and Jade Raymond, studio boss of Haven—a nascent outfit Sony just acquired as its newest first-party studio earlier this week—reiterated their praise for popular PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 titles such as Ghost of Tsushima, The Last of Us, and Horizon Forbidden West in an interview with Games Industry.Biz. “It goes without saying that we will continue to develop these single-player narrative-based games,” Hulst stated. “We will continue to do what we have always done.”

“There is a special sauce to getting into those incredible games that is exclusive to PlayStation.” “It’s not by luck that you see so many blockbusters with Metacritic scores of 90 or above,” Raymond said, likely alluding to the Metacritic scores of Sony’s first-party slate.

Having said that, Haven will not be adding to the historic PlayStation single-player game library, at least not for the time being. According to The Verge, the company, which was created last year, hasn’t unveiled or even confirmed a game yet, but it wants to make its debut with a high-profile live-service game, which will be released in 2019. In January, Sony spent $3.6 billion on Bungie, the studio behind Destiny 2, marking the company’s most significant investment yet in the live-service market. With the release of 10 live-service games by 2026 (an ambitious ambition that says Sony is confident our planet will not be submerged by then), the company has set itself the goal of publishing ten games in total.