Company president Hiroki Totoki shared lessons learned from live service shooter’s struggles during earnings call

Sony leadership has discussed some of the factors behind the failure of live service shooter Concord.

VGC reported that investors asked management multiple questions regarding the game’s collapse during the earnings call that followed Sony’s most recent financials.

Sony president, COO and CFO Hiroki Totoki said, via an interpreter, that the platform holder is “still in the process of learning” when it comes to live service games, but that several areas of improvement of already been identified for future titles.

“With regards to new IP, of course, you don’t know the result until you actually try it,” he said.

“We probably need to have a lot of gates, including user testing or internal evaluation, and the timing of such gates. And then we need to bring them forward, and we should have done those gates much earlier than we did.

“Also, we have a siloed organisation, so going beyond the boundaries of those organisations in terms of development, and also sales, I think that could have been much smoother.

“And then going forward, in our own titles and in third-party titles, we do have many different windows. And we want to be able to select the right and optimal window so that we can deploy them on our own platform without cannibalisation, so that we can maximise our performance in terms of title launches.”

Concord launched on August 23, and was taken offline 11 days later due to low sales. Players were offered a full refund, while Sony said it would work with developer Firewalk Studios “determine the best path forward.”

Last week, Sony revealed that path ahead meant closure for Firewalk Studios and a permanent shutdown for Concord.

Elsewhere in the earnings call, VGC reported that Sadahiko Hayakawa – Sony’s senior vice president for finance and investor relations – emphasised that while Concord failed, the company has seen success with live service launches in 2024.

“We launched two live-service games this year,” he said. “Helldivers 2 was a huge hit, while Concord ended up being shut down. We gained a lot of experience and learned a lot from both.

“We intend to share the lessons learned from our successes and failures across our studios, including in the areas of title development management as well as the process of continually adding expanded content and scaling the service after its release so as to strengthen our development management system.

“We intend to build on an optimum title portfolio during the current mid-range plan period that combines single-player games – which are our strengths and which have a higher predictability of becoming hits due to our proven IP – with live-service games that pursue upside while taking on a certain amount of risk upon release.”

Hayakawa’s comments affirm that Sony will continue to push into the live service space, with the company announcing this time last year that it would launch six such titles by the end of March 2026.