This year marked the original PlayStation's 30th anniversary, an era that took Sony from a distant outsider to the top dog in the games industry. However, 2024 also marked some of PlayStation's biggest failures, showing that the platform holder may have to change its approach if it hopes to see 40.
have gone against the grain of the cost-of-living crisis. And, by focusing on live service games and AAA single-player, Sony has demanded big wins from its developers. This year, that strategy led to outsize successes and significant failures, and the developers bore the brunt of the losses.
However, in 2024, we also saw signs of a new era for PlayStation that may bear fruit in 2025. Certainly, if there's one thing we can expect in the next 12 months, it's to see how Sony plans to end this generation of consoles.
Terminal velocity
, with their millions of playing and paying customers, Sony revealed plans to launch 12 live service games by April 2026. However, the strategy has had wildly mixed results.
. Released at the start of February, this co-op shooter became PlayStation's fastest-selling game of all time, shifting 12 million copies in its first three months, and closed the year by winning both Best Multiplayer Game and Best Ongoing Game at The Game Awards. It would seem to vindicate Sony's pivot toward live service games. But, then, that would be ignoring the elephant weighing down the other hand.
, making it one of the shortest-lived online games ever released and one of the biggest flops in the industry's history.
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, which previously received yearly expansions, is switching to a faster cadence of smaller seasonal releases.
and plans to move 150 workers to other publisher teams. And if there's one thing Sony showed its studios in 2024, it's how brutal it can be in responding to failure.
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Solo and smaller
, it plans to "continue releasing major single-player game titles every year".
, Kadokawa.
set to cost even more.
in October. "We're seeing a collapse of creativity in games today with studio consolidation and the high cost of production."
. This joy-filled platformer falls far below the scale of AAA, yet it became one of the highest-reviewed and most-talked-about games of the year.
New hardware on the horizon
, a mid-generation upgrade that doubled down on the commitment to high-fidelity gaming.
announced for release in 2025.
, its AI-upscaling solution.
's handheld adaptations.
A new generation of handhelds that play PS5 games could be just the ecosystem Sony needs to create a market for smaller-budget games on its devices.
Even after 30 years in the business, the last 12 months showed how much Sony knows and doesn't know. Sony recognized Arrowhead and Team Asobi as small teams capable of making multi-million-selling games - games that showcase the best of PlayStation. However, it also highlighted that it's just as capable of failure, greenlighting, and investing in games that can't find a market.
2025 will show if Sony has learned any lessons from this year. Whatever the case, as we've seen consistently through the past year, the developers pay for those mistakes.
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