Helldivers 2 is a surprise hit, but Sony has been pretty up front about a desire to bet on live service games. There are still 8-10 games in Sony's live service pipeline with Marathon and Concorde coming up to bat.
the cancellation of LoU: Factions put a bit hole in 2024 for Sony... Helldivers might be able to help the financials. Personally, I would make Helldivers full mutilplat. If Sony wants a 'true' Fortenight, it needs to be everywhere.
As for Sony going day and date, I think that only happens with their live service offerings.
As long as Sony is in the hardware business, they need to keep their first party exclusives on Playstation for at least a year or two.
the bigger question is the cost of game development. They need to ramp down the scale of AAA games to reduce development cost in spin up release schedules. 1 game from Naughty Dog during the entirety of PS5 is a non starter...same with Santa Monica and Guerilla.
Personally, I loved the LoU2, but it didn't need to be 25 hours...they could have lopped off 5 hours and had a tighter game which could have reduced development time and cost.
Game markets have flatlined a little bit and AAA game development and cost is at a major crossroad IMO
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