Shawn Layden, the former chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) Worldwide Studios, has stated during an interview with PSI that he doesn’t think narrative-driven, single-player games are going anywhere just yet.
I firmly believe that single-player, narrative-driven gaming is here to stay. It’s how we built this business. That’s what sustains it. It’s a type of game you can enjoy by yourself and talk to friends about. Maybe there’s multiplayer, maybe there isn’t. But I think essentially most of our great gaming experiences are when we allow ourselves to be immersed in that world with that character, to learn that story, more so than ‘I got online with a bunch of friends, and we played team deathmatch.’
There’s obviously been a major push into the live service spectrum in recent years from various developers, although not all of them have set the world on fire. Back when Jim Ryan was leading PlayStation early in the PS5 lfiecycle, the console maker had pledged to release 12 live service games by the end of March 2026. Fast forward to the end of 2023, and Sony announced a delay for half of those titles.
Things didn’t exactly work out for Sony on the live service front however, as you only need to look at Concord, a new live service shooter developed by Firewalk Studios. The game launched August 2024 after much hype but was shuttered only weeks later as it was a major flop, and its creator shut down as a result. Naughty Dog also cancelled its The Last of Us multiplayer project in December 2023, and even Bungie’s new extraction shooter, Marathon, is struggling to attract significant numbers.
In August 2025, Sony Interactive Entertainment Chief Financial Officer, Lin Tao, admitted during a Q&A following the company’s then-recent financial results that its live service push hasn’t gone as smoothly as they had hoped for. Despite all the setbacks, Hideaki Nishino, CEO and President of SIE, stated during an interview with Famitsu magazine that it’s still not giving up on its live service plans.
Layden himself stated on the Save State Plus podcast in March 2025 that one of the reasons he decided to leave Sony was due to the company’s pivot to live service products.
[Source – PSI via Gaming Bolt]