Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida revealed he would have resisted Sony's controversial push into live-service games. Yoshida, President of SIE Worldwide Studios from 2008 to 2019, told Kinda Funny Games that Sony acknowledged the inherent risk in this investment.

Yoshida's comments follow a turbulent period for PlayStation's live-service ventures. While Helldivers 2 from Arrowhead Studios became a massive success, selling 12 million copies in just 12 weeks, other titles faced cancellations or disastrous launches.

Concord stands as a significant setback, lasting only weeks before being shut down due to extremely low player numbers. The game's failure proved costly, with Kotaku reporting an initial development investment of approximately $200 million—a sum insufficient to fully fund development, IP acquisition, or the purchase of Firewalk Studios itself.

This followed the cancellation of Naughty Dog's The Last of Us multiplayer game and, more recently, two unannounced live-service titles: a God of War project at Bluepoint and another at Bend Studio (Days Gone developers). Yoshida, who recently left Sony after 31 years, stated that if he were in Hermen Hulst's current position, he would have resisted the live-service push.

“Managing the budget, I was responsible for allocating funds,” Yoshida explained. “If the company considered that direction, diverting resources from another God of War or single-player title to solely focus on live-service games wouldn't have made sense. However, after I left and Hermen took over, the company provided more resources. They didn't stop single-player game development; they added resources for live-service games. They knew the risk; success in this competitive genre is unlikely. They gave Hermen the resources to try. Helldivers 2's success was unexpected. If I were Hermen, I'd have resisted that direction. Maybe that's why they removed me!”

Sony's president, COO, and CFO, Hiroki Totoki, acknowledged lessons learned from both Helldivers 2's success and Concord's failure during a recent financial call. Totoki cited the need for earlier user testing and internal evaluations for Concord, suggesting a failure to identify and address issues early in development. He also pointed to Sony's “siloed organization” and Concord’s release window, potentially causing market cannibalization with the release of Black Myth: Wukong.

Sony senior vice president for finance and IR, Sadahiko Hayakawa, compared the launches of Helldivers 2 and Concord, emphasizing the sharing of lessons learned across studios to improve development management and post-launch content strategies. The future PlayStation live-service portfolio includes titles like Bungie's Marathon, Guerrilla's Horizon Online, and Haven Studio's Fairgame$.