Destiny 2 Helldivers 2
Bungie Arrowhead
There is a lot of hand-wringing both about the state of Destiny 2 and Sony’s push into live-service territory, breaking from its “big single player games only” pattern of the last few decades. However, things appear to be going better than anyone may think, according to Sony’s latest earnings.
In Destiny 2’s case, a big headline this week was that Sony took an impairment loss by devaluing Bungie as a whole by $200 million, saying Destiny hasn’t met their initial expectations. However, between Destiny, Helldivers and a few other live services, Sony has also reported that PlayStation revenue is 40% first-party live service games. One frequently mentioned in these reports is MLB: The Show, whose live service status may be debatable, but Sony still counts it.
While there’s a lot of focus on Destiny 2 these days, both that game and Helldivers 2 are currently experiencing record low playercounts. On Steam, Destiny 2 has recently brushed up against sub-15,000 concurrent peaks, its lowest ever. Helldivers 2, meanwhile, no longer has the swollen playercount it once did two years ago, and has record low 23,000 peaks. They are still, however, two of the biggest, highest-profile live service games Sony has, and given that they are making up 40% of PlayStation first-party revenue despite these lows, that’s saying something about their continued earnings (and perhaps PlayStation waning in other areas).
Big stories the last few years include PlayStation cancelling its Naughty Dog Last of Us Factions game, and the historic failure of live service shooter Concord. But there are still other high-profile projects in the works as Sony presses onward. The doomed one appears to be Fairgames, the heist shooter, but Bungie has Marathon coming up, fate unknown, and Sony carved off a chunk of Bungie to make a game codenamed Gummi Bears, which I’ve heard is promising. Sony has also just announced that it will make Horizon Steel Dawn, a multiplayer MMO, which is in addition to a multiplayer, non-mobile Horizon game that Guerrilla is currently making. A Ratchet and Clank multiplayer game was just announced, and a few others are in production as well.
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There is constant pushback among gamers who are often tired of the live service trend taking over the industry, and the “prestige” games of each year are often single player. But the reality is that even for a single player-focused studio like Sony with declining playercounts in its high-profile live service games, that is still a ton of revenue, so it’s no wonder everyone keeps trying. And more are succeeding than you might think.
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