Sony Interactive Entertainment may be best known for its marquee single-player-focused games like God of War, The Last of Us, Spider-Man, Uncharted, and Horizon these days, but the PlayStation company has big plans to expand its live-service online multiplayer offerings — and the recent acquisition of Destiny developer Bungie will be an important component in that strategy, Sony says.
“The strategic significance of this acquisition lies not only in obtaining the highly successful Destiny franchise, as well as major new IP that Bungie is currently developing,” Sony executive deputy president and CFO Hiroki Totoki said in an investor presentation (via Eurogamer) broadcast on Wednesday, “but also in incorporating into the Sony group the expertise and technologies that Bungie has developed in the live-game service space. We intend to utilize these strengths when developing game IP at PlayStation Studios as we expand into the live-game services area.
“Through close collaboration between Bungie and PlayStation Studios we aim to launch more than 10 live-service games by the fiscal year ending March 31, 2026.”
Totoki didn’t specify which titles or properties would be included in that 10-game, four-year span, but his comments align with how Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan recently spoke of its acquisition of Bungie.
“The way people play games has changed a lot over the last few years,” Ryan said in an interview with GamesIndustry. “We have created some wonderful properties over the course of the last 25 years, with characters that people love and resonate the world over. Offering the opportunity to enjoy those experiences in a completely different way is something that we are very excited about. I can’t go into details today, but we have a really amazing roadmap on how to do that.”
The way to do that, clearly, is with the aid of Bungie, which has grown and maintained Destiny 2, across multiple generations and hardware platforms, over the past four and a half years for millions of players.
Added Ryan, “When you have the potential to have a partner like Bungie who has been there, done it all before, learned the lessons and have got this wonderful, brilliant team who is there and has the potential to help us… we think we can take something that would have taken a certain number of years, and significantly decrease the time it will take to get it right.”
While Bungie will continue to grow Destiny 2 — two major expansions, The Witch Queen and Lightfall are still on the way — the studio also has other irons in the fire. With previous financial backing from NetEase, Bungie is also reportedly developing a new multiplayer action game with a potential hero focus (a la Overwatch and Valorant). That game may be named Matter, based on a trademark filing dating back to 2018.
As for PlayStation Studios, Sony’s internal teams have a few other live-service game candidates in the works. Naughty Dog is working on a multiplayer follow-up for The Last of Us Part 2, and an internal Sony studio is reportedly making a new Twisted Metal. Sony is also partnering with two newly formed independent studios, ex-Treyarchers Dave Anthony and Jason Blundell’s Deviation Games and Jade Raymond’s Haven Studios, to develop new properties for PlayStation.
