Live service games are a massive gamble. We all know it. I understand this, you understand this, Sony should understand this but isn't—ah, damnit.
In a recent Q&A session, Sony's CFO Lin Tao (via ) talks a lot about the studio's foibles such as with the and the . I should note that this was via an interpreter, so there'll be 
a smidge lost in translation, but it's all very telling how little Sony's dissuaded from its current path.
"Somewhat negative news has been coming out," Tao said of Marathon and Concord, "But if we look at the past five years, five years ago live service games were almost non-existent for PlayStation Studios. We [now] have Helldivers 2, MLB The Show and Gran Turismo 7, and Bungie's Destiny 2, so we have these four live services contributing to sales and profits in a stable manner."
I'd like to point out that Destiny 2 came out in 2017, which is actually seven years ago, but I suppose to Tao's credit not every Sony-piloted live service game has been a complete failure. And, sure, but let's just—let's just sweep that under the rug, real quick. We don't need to look at that.
She then went on to state that "for Q1 the live [[link]] service ratio was about 40%, for the full year it's a little less, probably between 20-30%," which, in her mind, means that "in terms of the transformation, it's not entirely going smoothly, but from a longer-term perspective, if you look at the changes over five years you see that there's definitely been a change."
I mean, sure, there's been a change—from a company who used to put out games you could play for more than a month to one where that's . But hey, Tao and Sony are both reflecting. They're growing and doing some self-exploration, and they've decided that they need to simply stop making bad live service games and start making good live service games.
"Of course, we recognise that there are still many issues, so we should learn the lessons from mistakes and make sure 
that we introduce live service content where there's less waste and it's more smooth." Genius! If only someone had thought of that sooner!
Look, I know we're all past the point of expecting videogame executives in shareholder meetings and Q&A sessions, but it still does boggle me how masterfully Tao is able to gesture vaguely in the direction of truth without 
saying anything about it. I'm looping back around to being just plain impressed.
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GameTiger37
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