PlayStation to Launch ‘More Than 10’ Live Service Games By 2026

By March 2026, PlayStation expects to deliver “more than 10” live service games, a goal that will be aided by the company’s acquisition of Bungie.

“Through close collaboration with Bungie and the PlayStation Studios, we intend to launch more than 10 live service games by the fiscal year ending March 31 2026,” Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki stated during the company’s most recent earnings call.

Games that are updated with fresh material over time are known as live service games, and they make the majority of their money through in-game payments rather than initial sales. Totoki cited a significant increase in revenue from these types of games as one of the reasons Sony pursued the model:

“The worldwide game content market doubled in size between 2014 and 2021, thanks to add-on content revenue from live game services, which expanded at a 15% annual pace. This pattern is likely to persist in the future.”

Bungie’s early investment in live service games, beginning with Destiny in 2014, has given it “a wealth of experience and outstanding technology in the field,” according to Totoki, which Sony sees as a big asset in acquiring the firm.

“The strategic significance of this acquisition lies not only in acquiring Bungie’s highly successful Destiny franchise as well as major new IP that Bungie is currently developing,” Totoki explained, “but also in incorporating Bungie’s expertise and technologies in the live game services space into the Sony group.”

Update

“As we grow into the live game services field, we want to use these strengths when producing game IP at the PlayStation Studios.”

It will be something of a major shift for first-party Sony games, which have tended to focus on single-player narrative experiences in recent years, often to huge acclaim. It’s unlikely that Sony will abandon that strategy, but it feels likely that live service games will become a major part of the company’s output.

Bungie is already working on a “comedic” new IP that is quite possibly a part of the selection of live service games that Sony plans on releasing.

Interestingly, while these may be first-party games, they may not be the exclusives that Sony is notable for sticking to. Totoki also said the company plans to extend its presence across non-PlayStation platforms, referencing the recent success of God of War on PC. “We intend to acquire new users and increased engagement on platforms other than PlayStation,” he said.

The Competition

This push could be tied to the Xbox Game Pass competitor that Sony is reportedly working on, but could also mean its continued release of first-party PlayStation games on PC, and the work of Bungie in a multiplaform space.

The combination of live service titles and mutliplatform releases is something Sony is banking on as a huge revenue driver in the coming years: “Catalyzed by the acquisition of Bungie,” continued Totoki, “we intend to accelerate the growth of our first-party game software revenue, aiming to more than double the amount by FY 2025.”