20 Ridiculous Reasons Video Games Were Cancelled
7. Sony Overestimated The Live Service Market - All These Live Service Games
Though the PS5 is a fantastic piece of hardware, this generation has been an immensely frustrating one for Sony fans, considering how much time, money, and energy they've wasted chasing the live service gold rush.
In early 2022, barely a year into the PS5's life cycle, Sony announced plans to release a dozen live service games by 2025, but this goal was later halved to just six amid developmental turmoil.
Fast forward to late 2025, and Sony has since cancelled eight of its initial dozen live service titles, and only one - Helldivers 2 - has actually had a successful launch,
Some of the more notable cancellations include The Last of Us multiplayer game, Concord (which was shuttered mere weeks after release), and live service games based on God of War, Spider-Man, and Twisted Metal.
It's painfully clear that Sony has vastly overestimated the demand for and underestimated the time-money cost of live service games.
After all, most players tend to find just one or two games-as-a-service time sinks and stick with them - there simply isn't a player-base large enough to justify the expense of these titles.
And it was thunderously obvious to many when Sony first announced this initiative, ensuring the PS5 generation has been a woefully disappointing one for anyone expecting a steady drip-feed of first-party PS5 exclusives.