Sony's Horizon live service spinoff could be dead by December

[Alfonso Maruccia]

A Failure to Look Forward To: Sony has tried multiple times to establish a successful gaming-as-a-service business, turning its traditional single-player fanbase into an endless stream of subscriptions and microtransactions. According to internal sources, the company's latest live service attempt is most likely going to fail as well.

Sony officially introduced Horizon Hunters Gathering (HHG) earlier this year. The game is set in the Horizon universe, but it replaces the traditional single-player formula with a live service, co-op action multiplayer design. Developed by Guerrilla Games, HHG was conceived as yet another attempt to create a successful live service experience. Now, unnamed sources said that HHG could turn into a new Concord-style failure sooner rather than later.

The sources told Bloomberg that HHG received negative feedback from the private beta testing sessions held in recent months. Sony executives have now decided to remove any live-service component from the experience, turning the game into a more traditional co-op multiplayer title. Story mode is back, and the game's scope is now much smaller than before.

Guerrilla developers have been working on HHG for a while, and the project has not been canceled just yet. However, the sources revealed that Sony's Amsterdam-based subsidiary now has until December to "impress" the executives. If the next game build does not satisfy the C-suites, HHG might be abandoned and most of the developers will be reassigned to another project, which will also go through a crucial evaluation phase by the end of the year.

Sony Interactive Entertainment wanted HHG to carry many of the elements found in successful live service/GAAS products. The game includes a few predefined classes of "Hunters" with specific abilities, weapons, and playstyles, and a roguelite perk system to further customize a Hunter. The game was expected to support cross-platform play on both PS5 and Windows PCs, with a maximum of three different players joining the online co-op sessions.

Within a few months, HHG might become yet another example of Sony being unable to break into the live service business with a successful product. After Concord's unprecedented fiasco, the Japanese gaming giant was forced to cancel multiple live service projects belonging to some of its most successful single-player franchises, including God of War, Spider-Man, and The Last of Us.

The sources said that these failed attempts have cost the corporation hundreds of millions of dollars already. Sony acquired Bungie to try and build on the Destiny franchise, but it failed there as well. Bungie is now focused on the Marathon project, but the extraction shooter with live-service elements is struggling as well.

Guerrilla has been working on Horizon Hunters Gathering for many years now, the sources confirmed. A small team was left to design the next single-player title in the Horizon franchise, but the project might take a while to materialize. Plans could eventually change, but Sony could still cancel HHG by this year's end.

Permalink to story:

Sony's Horizon live service spinoff could be dead by December

 

[gdavid65]

And the same company green-lit Marathon, and not just one, but two SIE CEO have signed off on, and it has been a dismal failure.

Two CEO's just can't stand to lose face on how many billions they absolutely pissed away on the Bungie Acquisition, one of the worst in gaming history.

Sadly it's the hard working developers and other employees below them who have put countless hours overtime in, who have/will be let go that are the ultimate losers, simply due to the biggest losers making the decisions at the top.

 

[yRaz]

When the live service model was just a couple of games and the idea was new, it was novel and fun idea. The live service business model wasn't something that the first games started out with, it emerged naturally from the type of game and gameplay they were trying to create. People look at the first live service games, ignore what made them fun and look at them as a blueprint for a business model. Gameplay came first, that's why people were willing to spend money on them as a live service. When you make a game where the monitozation comes first and gameplay is an after thought then you get this gaming dystopia we are in.

There is also the side of things that "consumers" now have a good idea what to expect out of new live service games. Long grinds designed to make you spend money in a cash store to speed up progression.

A huge problem with these games is that they have a gameplay loop designed to make you feel like you're always behind. The whole "reward side" of these games(and many other genres these days) that keeps you playing is notably absent because it directly conflicts with monitazation.

Games aren't made for gamers by artists anymore. They're made for investors using spreadsheets that remove any context of why people are willing to spend money on those games.

 

[Squid Surprise]

If only people focused on making games FUN to play… when you do that, money tends to follow.

 

[Axeia]

It's not just RAM that makes Playstations expensive.
Sony being extremely insistent on trying to make a live service game happen is definitely part of it as well.

I mean... spending 400 million on Concord alone which seems to have gone completely to waste. That's a lot of money they need to back in other ways. And that's just Concord, they've had many more failures...
At this point their reputation when it comes to live service games is so bad that it alone might already cause the next failure.
Going by just the image above, I'll judge a book by its cover... checks almost all the diversity checkboxes and about zero of what gamers want to see ones.
I'd put money on it that this one will fail as well. Perhaps not as spectacularly as Concord did, but it will not be profitable.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

God bless

 

[Revolution 11]

When the live service model was just a couple of games and the idea was new, it was novel and fun idea. The live service business model wasn't something that the first games started out with, it emerged naturally from the type of game and gameplay they were trying to create. People look at the first live service games, ignore what made them fun and look at them as a blueprint for a business model. Gameplay came first, that's why people were willing to spend money on them as a live service. When you make a game where the monitozation comes first and gameplay is an after thought then you get this gaming dystopia we are in.

There is also the side of things that "consumers" now have a good idea what to expect out of new live service games. Long grinds designed to make you spend money in a cash store to speed up progression.

A huge problem with these games is that they have a gameplay loop designed to make you feel like you're always behind. The whole "reward side" of these games(and many other genres these days) that keeps you playing is notably absent because it directly conflicts with monitazation.

Games aren't made for gamers by artists anymore. They're made for investors using spreadsheets that remove any context of why people are willing to spend money on those games.

Why not check out the hordes of great indie games and AA tier games out there. Cheaper for your wallet, actually made by dedicated small teams that care about their creative vision, interesting and fun mechanics. There are so many great titles out there, not everything is in AAA gaming.

I just played Brigador Killers yesterday for example. Very fun.

Not saying you are wrong about your points, just that it is worth pointing people to alternatives in addition to bashing the problems with the current model.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

And the same company green-lit Marathon, and not just one, but two SIE CEO have signed off on, and it has been a dismal failure.

Two CEO's just can't stand to lose face on how many billions they absolutely pissed away on the Bungie Acquisition, one of the worst in gaming history.

Sadly it's the hard working developers and other employees below them who have put countless hours overtime in, who have/will be let go that are the ultimate losers, simply due to the biggest losers making the decisions at the top.

The same hard working developers that made incredibly boring trite? THOSE developers?

Sorry, but the people who made Concord were not these innocent angels. They made absolute slop, and it got shoved in their faces. Bungie is filled with activists who cry on twitter for half the work day and steal content for the other half.

It's the default setting to hate the executives managing companies, it takes real courage to hate the developers who make this trash then cry when we dont support them.

 

[Kirby1]

Horizon is a good IP and I don't fault Sony for wanting to build off it, but clearly this wasn't the way to do it.