Sony is investing $2.1B in gaming R&D, focusing on live service.

https://insider-gaming.com/sony-live-service-games-investment/

In a report published by Nikkei, it was revealed that Sony intends to ‘pour’ financial resources into gaming research and development – to the tune of around $2.13 billion. That’s reportedly an investment that’s being made before the end of fiscal year 2024, and it’ll account for a whopping 40% of Sony’s entire R&D spending.

Sony plans to allocate a staggering 60% of all PlayStation 5 development spending to live service games exclusively for the year ending March 2026. It was also stated that there’s a grand goal in place to have no fewer than twelve live service games in the PlayStation portfolio within that same timeline.

Exciting times for everyone in Live Ops I'm sure 😉

50 points · 19 comments · view on lemmy.world

19 Comments

samus12345@lemmy.world · 34 pts · 3y

Sony is investing $2.1B in gaming R&D

:D

focusing on live service

>:(

Jacoolh@lemmy.ml · 27 pts · 3y (1 reply)

Fuck live services. Just another subscription model.

ampersandrew@kbin.social · 6 pts · 3y

And worse, they're nearly universally designed with always-online killswitches that destroy preservation for those games.

BubsyFanboy@szmer.info · 15 pts · 3y (1 reply)

Sony is investing $2.1B in gaming R&D

Yes!

focusing on live service.

No!

rafoix@kbin.social · 2 pts · 3y

More like investment in FOMO game design.

NuPNuA@lemm.ee · 11 pts · 3y (2 replies)

Did they forget they built their current audience on strong single player titles? Seems like this is a sahreholder appeasing move, as in if he didn't ok this they would replace Ryan.

Jinxyface@kbin.social · 2 pts · 3y

They're a public company. their shareholders are the customers they have to please. Not you.

KoofNoof@lemmy.ml · -2 pts · 3y

Exactly lol

ampersandrew@kbin.social · 7 pts · 3y

12 live service games by 2026, and 9 of them will have flopped, been sunset, and lost forever to time by 2028.

jmsw22@lemmy.ml · 5 pts · 3y

Booo

SheeEttin@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 3y (5 replies)

Sony has owned Gaikai since 2012 and Onlive('s patents) since 2015, and it was feature-complete last decade. What is billions more going to do?

dmmeyournudes@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 3y (4 replies)

Live service means ongoing support, content, and subscription's, not remote cloud gaming.

SheeEttin@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 3y (3 replies)

None of those require R&D.

ampersandrew@kbin.social · 2 pts · 3y (2 replies)

R&D in this case would be prototyping, testing network infrastructure, etc. Seeing what type of live service game they think the market will react well to.

SheeEttin@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 3y (1 reply)

That's not R&D though, that's market research and system/network engineering/architecture. R&D is specifically for blue-sky inventing, not so much iterating.

ampersandrew@kbin.social · 1 pts · 3y

It's market research and game development. I don't think Sony has existing live service games to iterate on, so they're making something new. A lot of new somethings.

JJROKCZ@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 3y

Yay r&d into the worst type of game model…. Can’t wait to see all the failures that get abandoned within 6 months of launch