It’s fine to make gaas , just not buy some of the best of the best single player game studio makers.. the risk is big, and a massive flop would cause irreversible damage,..

Nah, it had nothing to do with how it played. It just didnt meet expectations for a sequel to be invested in.

that's only an issue if you're looking to cash in on MTs. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a great single player title not maintaining players.

@Reaper_22
This is 100% correct but we live in a world where people are dishonest about reality in favor of their own feelings.
Of course Sony has to pursue more than just single player games. They have the data. They can see what people are playing. They HAVE to invest in LS. For them not to do so would be malpractice as they are a corporation. Sony needs to find a way to reduce the development times but the whole industry is dealing with that.

@Seraphim
Why would the biggest company in the gaming industry be the only major publisher not pursuing MT/LS?
It doesn't make sense. Of course there is nothing wrong with Single Player and they are continuing to release SP but they must learn to walk and chew gum at the same time.

Let the studio make the game THEY want to make. As long as they have the creative freedom and as long as they aren't being forced to make something they don't want to make I am fine with that. I look at Clair 33 and I look at Helldivers 2 and one thing that stands out about both of these games is that the studios are both very passionate about their work even though it is clearly different.

I mean there's been so many stories over Days Gone 2 where I don't even know if the multiplayer sequel idea could even be true.

First, it was Days Gone tanked in terms of sales to the point Sony wasn’t interested in a sequel.

Next there is there was a pitch for a sequel that would be a multiplayer and have a shared world but apparently they didn't like that within the studio.

After that it was said the game actually did sell well (according to Ross apparently) and it was the best selling game in Bends history yet Sony still wasn’t happy.

The latest story we have in the past year or so was that Bend themselves cancelled the sequel without actually pitching the idea to Sony. They never bothered.

@Foxtrot

Good lord! 🤦‍♂️ A real shame cause while i felt Days Gine was very flawed, i also thought it was an amazing foundation for a sequel. Nothing come.close to fighting the hoards on Days gone, the planning and execution for larger hoards is sa incredibly satisfying

Eh. Jim sucks, but at the end of the day, the public face of many companies only exist to justify the direction the board wants to take. They're functionally a lightning rod for all criticism. Microsoft axed Mattrick, not because I think Xbox One was his idea, but because the optics of bringing in new blood just looks better. So they dropped someone who looks more corporate and brought in an "average Joe" gamer to implement parts of the original Xbox One plan in slow motion and repackaged it.

However, when a company branch is on top of the competition, the board tends to give more flexibility to the company face, but still need to implement their vision (which is where Ryan comes in). His tweaks around the edges weren't great, but his departure in favor of a seasoned game studio head (Hulst) and financial expert (Nishino) really shows they want to be a Japanese company with appeal to the west and prioritize game quality, but with heavy financial regulations in place. Ultimately, I think the money people won out, but maybe it's in response to the tariff stuff.

I think Sony affords their heads more agency than Microsoft so we can definitely say Jim screwed things up, but again, only to a certain extent.

Sony's not paying the price its workers are.

They were listening to the money that games like Fortnite were pulling in. Market research shows service games when successful make more money. It’s a gamble that Sony was too cocky to worry about. Now ppl are losing their jobs in an economy that’s gonna slow down any minute.

@Profchaos

The workers let go were probably hired for the live service game and released now because it was cancelled

I understand the argument that if fans truly wanted a sequel to Days Gone, they should've supported it at launch at full price. But that perspective misses a lot of important context.

First of all, Days Gone launched in a broken state. It needed several patches just to become stable and playable. For many gamers, paying $60 for something clearly unfinished just wasn’t justifiable. That wasn’t a lack of support—it was a fair response to a product that didn’t meet expectations out of the gate.

Despite that, over 8 million people eventually bought the game. It built a strong, passionate fanbase—proof that the game had value and potential once it was properly patched. A sequel would’ve had a much stronger foundation: a team that had learned from the first game, a loyal audience, and way more hype around a continued story.

But Days Gone also had to contend with another challenge—it was unfairly judged against other first-party PlayStation exclusives. Critics compared it directly to polished, masterful experiences like Uncharted, The Last of Us, and God of War. And while those comparisons might make sense from a branding perspective, they didn’t reflect the reality of the situation.

Studios like Naughty Dog and Santa Monica Studio had years—sometimes decades—of experience working with big teams and high budgets on flagship titles. Days Gone was Sony Bend Studio’s first major AAA console release in a very long time—their last being Syphon Filter back in the PS1 era. Before that, they were mostly focused on handheld games. Expecting them to match the output of the most elite studios in the industry, right out of the gate, was unrealistic and frankly unfair.

The harsh critical reception didn’t reflect the potential Days Gone actually had, and it probably played a big role in Sony's decision not to greenlight a sequel. Instead, they pushed Bend and other talented studios like Bluepoint toward live service projects—chasing trends instead of trusting the kinds of games their fans consistently show up for. Many of those live service games have since been canceled, likely wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and valuable time that could’ve gone toward meaningful single-player experiences.

So when people say, “You should’ve bought Days Gone at launch if you wanted a sequel,” they’re ignoring the bigger picture. Gamers didn’t reject the game—they waited for it to be worth their time. And once it was, they absolutely showed up. That should’ve been seen as a foundation to build on, not a reason to walk away from the franchise

@neutralgamer1992
Has a point. I supported this game day 1. There was either and audio sync issue or a cut scene issue that ruined the game for me early on. I dont blame gamers at all for holding off until it meets their standard.

"I don’t think the GaaS overall was a bad idea they’ve seen the success of others, however, forcing all your studios to focus on it was absolutely insane."

What's more interesting is that SIE was not actually 'forcing' their studios to make GaaS games. I have to find the article again but it was explained that these studios knew about Jim's plans for GaaS games and typically pitched those types of games to SIE because they would have a better chance of getting greenlit for production. They were chasing dollars instead of their ideal games.

Edit: I found the article. Take it for what it is, lol

https://wccftech.com/playst...

@ra

I don’t think they were forcing all of their studios, however, that initiative didn’t just come out of no where. Jim Ryan’s entire purpose was to make PlayStation more profitable than ever, and a collection of successful GaaS across platforms would have definitely done that. Based on his talk tracks and interviews he is a numbers guy, and he and Herman Hulst ran with this GaaS solution to all the PlayStation teams.

And when your CEO says this is what we’re getting behind and what the company and shareholders want going forward, everyone falls in line and pushes towards it.

Naughty Dog probably wanted Faction 2 with or without influence.

Sony Bend wanted Days Gone 2 and it was shot down, and now more than ever it makes way more sense, since the game, while initial impressions were slightly above average (which at the time wasn’t good enough being compared to God of War, Ghost, TLoUs, etc…), has found a cult following and has ended up selling extremely well across both PS4 and PS5. But instead they were dropped into this GaaS IP that failed and now they’ve wasted years of development when Days Gone 2 could have already been released or releasing.

They didn't have a choice lets be honest, a new boss comes in and lays out all these plans....what are any of them going to do? Pitch a single player game with none of the things that guy is asking for? You're just asking to be given less funding, less notice, less resources and the like. or maybe you're scared incase the guy decides to get rid of you for someone who will actually give him things that he wants.

They didn't get brutally forced but they had no choice but to go with the flow or Jim would find someone who would.

@Foxtrot
No, they definitely had a choice but many chose the path of least resistance.

We have plenty of single-player, non-LS games that began development during the LS initiative. Those projects obviously got greenlit for production. These studios just needed to have good ideas for single player games, but most just chose to come up with half-assed LS pitches.