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It doesn't sound like we've heard the last from MachineGames' Wolfenstein series
Game Updates

It doesn’t sound like we’ve heard the last from MachineGames’ Wolfenstein series

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Indiana Jones and the Great Circle studio MachineGames may right now have its focus on the whip-wielding professor, but it hasn’t forgotten its Wolfenstein heritage. In fact, in the words of studio head Jerk Gustafsson, the team would like to work on a New Colossus sequel.

As part of a recent ‘The Making of Wolfenstein’ documentary by Noclip, Gustafsson said MachineGames had always pictured a trilogy of Wolfenstein games to wrap up the story of BJ, or to give him his proper title – Terror-Billy, the scourge of the Nazi empire.

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“That journey for BJ, even during those first weeks at id, when we mapped out New Order, we still had the plan for at least [BJ], what would happen in the second one and what would happen in the third one,” the developer said (thanks, PC Gamer).

“I think that’s important to say, because – at least I hope – we’re not done with Wolfenstein yet.

“We have a story to tell.”

Is this something you would hope to see realised? You can check out the full Noclip video about the making of Wolfenstein below.

The Making of Wolfenstein – Noclip. Watch on YouTube

As for the here and now of MachineGames, the studio has just released its Indiana Jones and the Great Circle DLC, known as Order of Giants.

This is a news-in-brief story. This is part of our vision to bring you all the big news as part of a daily live report.



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Product Reviews

If the iPhone 17 doesn’t get ProMotion, I won’t be upgrading my iPhone 12

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In 2020, I bought an iPhone 12 to replace my aging Pixel 3, and nearly five years later, I’m still using that same device because it works fine and Apple has yet to bring the feature I want most on a regular iPhone: a ProMotion display. If you’re not familiar with the company’s marketing lingo, ProMotion is its way of describing a high-refresh rate display.

Apple introduced ProMotion with the iPhone 13 Pro. Since then, every Pro model has offered a 120Hz refresh rate display with the ability to scale down to 1Hz for always-on functionality. That’s great for gaming and day-to-day use; higher refresh rates make every interaction on the iPhone’s touchscreen look and feel smoother. In fact, high refresh rate displays are such a well-liked feature that most Android manufacturers have begun offering them on their entry-level devices, but it’s still something you need to spend $1,000 to get on an iPhone..

If you ask me, that’s a problem for Apple. The closest I got to upgrading was in 2023 when it released the iPhone 15, which was the first regular model to include the company’s Dynamic Island display cutout after it debuted on the iPhone 14 Pro. In the end, even the iPhone 15, with its better display, camera and USB-C charging, wasn’t enough to convince me to part with the iPhone 12, because the new model didn’t include a ProMotion screen. I imagine I’m not the only person who kept their old iPhone for the same reason.

At this point, Apple’s trickle-down strategy is painfully behind its competitors. In 2022, when display analyst Ross Young correctly predicted the entire iPhone 15 would offer Dynamic Island displays, he said the company likely wouldn’t bring ProMotion to its regular iPhones until 2024 at the earliest. He blamed the timing on a supply chain that “[couldn’t] support” the feature on Apple’s more affordable handsets. Whether or not that was true, I don’t know. In 2020, the same year Apple released the $799 iPhone 12, Google came out with the $700 Pixel 5, which came with a 90Hz OLED.

Either way, it appears my long wait is about to come to an end, with all four 2025 iPhone models — the iPhone 17, 17 Pro, 17 Pro Max and new iPhone 17 Air — reportedly set to offer 120Hz displays. For me, this is the year I upgrade, but I do wonder what it means for the future of the iPhone line.

If I had to guess, Apple’s decision to hold off on bringing ProMotion to the regular iPhone had more to do with the company wanting to give people a reason to spend extra on a Pro model than the limits of one of the largest and most efficient supply chains on the planet. If the pre-release rumors turn out to be true, the iPhone 17 will leave the iPhone Pro in an awkward place. With ProMotion gone as a differentiating feature and the Pro and Pro Max rumored to be made from aluminum again, there aren’t many reasons to go for the more expensive models other than if you want a telephoto camera or a bigger display in the case of the Pro Max.

I suspect this may be the last year we see an iPhone Pro, at least in the format we know it as now. When Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar and I got a chance to talk to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman during a recent episode of the Engadget podcast, he mentioned that Apple plans to go all in on the iPhone Air. At first, it may offer only a single camera and worse battery life than its siblings, but Gurman said Apple was confident it could further shrink those components over time and make the Air the equal of its current devices.

In other words, the iPhone Air might be a side project now, but it’s easy to envision a future where it becomes the company’s flagship. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I’m hopeful Apple plans for a future where the Air and regular iPhone offer similar features, but the company charges a premium for getting those in a sleeker package.



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Bitcoin (BTC) Doesn’t Cheer Fed Cut Bets. What Next?
GameFi Guides

Bitcoin (BTC) Doesn’t Cheer Fed Cut Bets. What Next?

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Bad news has just been bad news over the past 24 hours. Friday’s weak U.S. jobs report bolstered bets on deeper Fed cuts, but bitcoin BTC$110,145.43 hasn’t played along.

The leading cryptocurrency by market value remains heavy below $112,000, instead of rallying on the prospect of easier monetary policy as many had anticipated. The inability to find upside suggests potential for a deeper sell-off ahead.

NFP shock

Job seekers had a tough time in August as the nonfarm payrolls revealed just 22,000 job additions, significantly less than the Dow Jones’ projection of 75,000. The report also revised lower the combined job creation over June and July by 21,000. Notably, the revised June figure showed a net loss of 13,000.

Nine sectors, including manufacturing, construction, wholesale trade, and professional services, registered job losses, while health services and leisure and hospitality were bright spots.

The Kobeissi Letter called the jobs report “absolutely insane.” The newsletter service described the downward revisions in prior months as a sign of a broken system and the labour market entering recession territory.

Following the jobs data, the probability of a Fed rate cut at the Sept. 17 meeting surged to 100%, and the odds of a 50-basis-point cut jumped to 12%. The likelihood of additional rate cuts in November and December also increased, sending Treasury yields lower.

The upcoming revisions to earlier jobs reports are expected to add fuel to the rate cut bets. “The BLS will announce annual benchmark revisions on Tuesday, and they are expected to point to even weaker job growth earlier. Some surveys suggest between 500k and 1 mln jobs could be revised away,” Bannockburn Global Forex’s Managing Director and Chief Market Strategist, Marc Chandler said in a market update.

BTC’s double top is intact; volatility in Treasury yields may rise

Bitcoin briefly rallied on hopes of a Fed rate cut and softer yields, reaching a high of over $113,300. But the bounce quickly faded, with prices slipping back under $111,982 — the double‑top neckline.

Failing to retake that level underscored the late August double top breakdown and validates the bearish setup, keeping downside risks in focus. Prices crossing below the Ichimoku cloud further validates the bearish outlook, as Brent Donnelly, president of Spectra Markets, noted in a market update.

BTC’s daily chart. (TradingView/CoinDesk)

The first line of support is located around $101,700, which corresponds to the 200-day simple moving average (SMA). The latest double top breakdown in bitcoin closely mirrors the one from February this year, which led to a significant multi-week sell-off that pushed prices down to around $75,000.

The double top is a bearish reversal chart formation that occurs after an asset has experienced an uptrend. It forms when the price reaches a high point (the first peak), then pulls back to a support level called the neckline. The price then rises again but fails to surpass the first peak, creating a second peak at roughly the same level. The pattern is confirmed when the price breaks below the neckline, signaling that the previous uptrend has lost momentum and a downtrend may follow.

Treasury yields may turn volatile

The bearish technical outlook, presented by the latest double top breakdown, is reinforced by the possibility of a pickup in volatility in Treasury yields, which often leads to financial tightening.

The volatility could pick up in the coming days, as the impending Fed rate cuts could initially send the 10-year yield lower in a positive development for BTC and risk assets. That said, the downside looks limited and could be quickly reversed, much like what happened in late 2024.

Last year, from September through December, the 10-year yield actually rose, even as the Fed began cutting rates, reversing earlier declines that had occurred in the lead-up to September. The 10-year yield bottomed out at 3.6% in mid-September 2024 and then rose to 4.80% by mid-January.

While the labour market today appears significantly weaker than last year, inflation is relatively higher, and fiscal spending continues unabated, both of which mean that the yield could surge following the September rate cut.

“Why the 10yr yield rose from September through December 2024 is open to interpretation, but there was an underpinning of macro resilience, sticky-ish inflation and lots of talk on fiscal largesse as a medium-term risk. This time around, granted, worries on the economy are more intense. But offsetting this are ongoing fiscal concerns, and quite a different inflation dynamic,” analysts at ING said in a note to clients.

August CPI data due next week

When the Fed cut rates last September, the U.S. consumer price index was well below 3%. Since then, it has edged back up to 3%. More importantly, the August CPI data, due next week, is likely to provide further evidence of inflation stickiness.

According to Wells Fargo, the core CPI is likely to have risen by 0.3%, keeping the year-over-year rate at 3.1%. Meanwhile, the headline CPI is forecast to have risen 0.3% month-over-month and 2.9% year-over-year.



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Nintendo Only Creates New IP When Gameplay Doesn’t Fit Existing Franchises, Former Dev Says
Game Updates

Nintendo Only Creates New IP When Gameplay Doesn’t Fit Existing Franchises, Former Dev Says

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The more things change, the more they stay the same, and for Nintendo, the company still relies on its legacy IP when it starts to develop new games. While we’ve seen multiple studios and publishers launch new brands over the years, Nintendo has largely stuck to the classics for its new releases, and it often doesn’t see a reason to build a new IP. Why? According to a former developer, gameplay comes first and the “wrapper” is chosen based on which franchise fits the project best.

“New franchises haven’t come out simply because there’s no real need to make them,” former Nintendo software developer Ken Watanabe said to Bloomberg. “When Nintendo wants to do something new, it’s basically about the gameplay mechanics first–about creating a new way to play. As for the skin or the wrapper, they don’t really fuss over it. They just pick whatever fits that new gameplay best.”

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Now Playing: Kirby Air Riders Is Faster, Deeper, and Cleaner Than The Original

“Nintendo will then find the right franchise that fits with the new gameplay mechanics that it has developed, but in the rare instance that it can’t, the company will consider making a new IP. One of its newest properties–technically–is Splatoon, which first launched in 2015 for the Wii U. While Nintendo attempted to use familiar faces in the third-person shooter game, it simply didn’t work out, and the company decided to create the cast of Inklings to carry the series forward and better communicate the ideas of the game to players.

Looking ahead to the rest of the year and early 2026, Nintendo’s upcoming first-party games are all based on established franchises. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, Kirby Air Riders, and Splatoon Raiders are all on the way, and this year has seen the release of new Mario Kart and Donkey Kong games.

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Gaming Gear

Google doesn’t have to sell Chrome, judge in monopoly case rules

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Google will not have to divest its Chrome browser but will have to change some of its business practices, a federal judge has ruled. The ruling comes more than a year after the same judge ruled that Google had acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in internet search.

Following the ruling last year, the Department of Justice had proposed that Google should be forced to sell Chrome. But in a 230-page decision, Judge Amit Mehta said the government had “overreached” in its request. “Google will not be required to divest Chrome; nor will the court include a contingent divestiture of the Android operating system in the final judgment,” Mehta wrote. “Plaintiffs overreached in seeking forced divesture of these key assets, which Google did not use to effect any illegal restraints.”

Google will, however, no longer be permitted to strike exclusive deals around the distribution of search, Google Assistant, Gemini or Chrome, Mehta ruled. For example, Google can’t require device makers to pre-load its apps in order to get access to the Play Store. It also can’t condition revenue-sharing arrangements on the placement of its apps. But Google will be able to continue to pay partners — like Apple — for pre-loading search and other apps into their products. Mehta said that ending these arrangements could cause “downstream harms to distribution partners, related markets, and consumers.”

Mehta also ruled that Google will need to share some of its search data with competitors going forward. “Making data available to competitors would narrow the scale gap created by Google’s exclusive distribution agreements and, in turn, the quality gap that followed,” he wrote. The company is not required to hand over data related to its ads.

Mehta’s ruling is largely a win for the search giant, which had argued that divesting Chrome or Android “would harm Americans and America’s global technology leadership.” In a statement Tuesday, Google said it had “concerns” about some aspects of the ruling.

“Today’s decision recognizes how much the industry has changed through the advent of AI, which is giving people so many more ways to find information,” the company said. “Now the Court has imposed limits on how we distribute Google services, and will require us to share Search data with rivals. We have concerns about how these requirements will impact our users and their privacy, and we’re reviewing the decision closely.”

The company previously indicated it plans to appeal Mehta’s original decision, but said in June it would wait for a final decision in the case.

Update, September 2, 2025, 4:28PM PT: This post has been updated to add a statement from Google on the ruling.



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Massive Recall Doesn't Affect 15% Leap in Company Share Price
Product Reviews

Massive Recall Doesn’t Affect 15% Leap in Company Share Price

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The stock price of a company that is in the middle of a major recall still managed to see a 15% gain by the time the market closed Friday.

That recall has been issued for nearly 760,000 power tools following reports of explosions and fire hazards.

The move is one to watch because some companies in the power washer market are beginning to integrate into their devices. These AI-powered pressure washers can analyze the surface being cleaned and optimize their own performance to provide a better result with less effort. 

Ryobi uses AI technology in some areas of its business, particularly through a financial technology subsidiary, Financial AlgoTech Company (FATC). In its power tools division, Ryobi uses more fundamental smart technology rather than advanced AI. Some AI-generated imagery has also been found in Ryobi’s marketing, which has generated negative customer feedback. 

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) announced that the affected tools, manufactured by Ryobi (RYBIF), pose a risk of injury due to overheating and malfunctioning components.

Ryobi-branded power tools in North America are manufactured and distributed by Techtronic Industries (TTI), a Hong Kong-based company that also owns Milwaukee Tool and other brands.

The recall covers a range of cordless drills and other handheld power tools sold nationwide, with consumers urged to stop using the products immediately. No serious injuries have been reported, but the risk of burns, lacerations, and property damage has prompted regulators to act swiftly.

What happens with these malfunctioning items?

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) announced that the two models, RY142300 and RY142711VNM, have been linked to at least 135 incidents of capacitor failures, with over 40 cases resulting in explosions.

These explosions have caused multiple injuries, including finger amputations, fractures, and burns to users’ hands, faces, and eyes. The risks are significant enough that experts warn against continued use of the recalled pressure washers until repairs are made.

Home Depot and Direct Tools Factory Outlet sold approximately 764,000 units of these models in the U.S. between July 2017 and June 2024, with about 16,000 units sold in Canada.

Consumers are urged to stop using the products immediately, register for repairs, and contact the manufacturer for a free replacement or repair.

How does the affect tech?

This recall underscores ongoing concerns about product safety in outdoor power tools, many of which are used by big tech giants who manufacture everything from EVs to space ships, which often operate under high pressure and electrical stress, making rigorous safety checks imperative.

The manufacturer has offered free replacements and repair kits to affected customers. Consumers can check their product’s model number and serial number on the company’s website or contact customer service to determine if their tool is included in the recall.

This incident underscores ongoing concerns about product safety and the importance of vigilant oversight in manufacturing. Regulators continue to monitor for potential hazards associated with power tools and other consumer electronics to protect public safety.

Worried you might be affected? You can call RYOBI Customer Service at 1-800-597-9624 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern time.



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SHIB Price Crashes but Team Doesn't Give Up, Major Statement Says
Crypto Trends

SHIB Price Crashes but Team Doesn’t Give Up, Major Statement Says

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  • SHIB price falls hard, SHIB executive reacts
  • SHIB burns jump 157,726.72%

The pseudonymous SHIB marketing top executive, Lucie, has published a tweet, reacting to the recent Shiba Inu price dip. She gave the community a glimpse of hope, saying that things should change in the bullish way very soon — in the fall.

Meanwhile, the SHIB price has rebounded, attempting to recover from the recent price decline.

SHIB price falls hard, SHIB executive reacts

By Saturday morning, the second-biggest meme cryptocurrency, Shiba Inu, has faced a decline of 5%, falling from $0.00001267 to the $0.00001204 price level.

Over the past week, this decline constituted a substantial 11% as SHIB lost $0.00001352 in the current bear market.

Autumn is bullish.

Can’t wait to see where we’re headed. Dreaming of Japan, but also Korea, and China ( waiting for visa 😁) – all places where the Shib community keeps growing stronger.

The value of tokens may be down, but that should never stop us from building and adopting… pic.twitter.com/L2PfYQpED4

— 𝐋𝐔𝐂𝐈𝐄 (@LucieSHIB) August 30, 2025

Lucie reacted to this decline by stating that fall is going to be bullish due to the upcoming rate cuts. As for now, she stated that even though the SHIB price may be down, “that should never stop us from building and adopting Shibarium around the world.”

In the meantime, the SHIB price has rebounded by 3% and at the time of this writing is changing hands at $0.00001240 per coin.

You Might Also Like

SHIB burns jump 157,726.72%

According to the Shibburn platform, over the past day, the SHIB burn metric has faced a significant four-digit increase thanks to millions of meme coins getting driven out of circulation and locked in dead-end wallets.

The aforementioned data source revealed a crazy 157,726.72% surge in the daily SHIB burn rate as the community has succeeded in moving 2,411,616 SHIB coins to unspendable wallets, i.e., burned them.

HOURLY SHIB UPDATE$SHIB Price: $0.00001239 (1hr -0.22% ▼ | 24hr 1.54% ▲ )
Market Cap: $7,302,271,924 (1.57% ▲)
Total Supply: 589,247,732,073,096

TOKENS BURNT
Past 24Hrs: 2,481,036 (157726.72% ▲)
Past 7 Days: 14,068,717 (-76.32% ▼)

— Shibburn (@shibburn) August 30, 2025

As for the weekly SHIB burns, there is a 76.32% decline here, while the amount of meme coins that has been burned stands at 14,068,717 SHIB.





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PlayStation CEO doesn't want first party studios to "play it safe" but "fail early and cheaply"
Game Reviews

PlayStation CEO doesn’t want first party studios to “play it safe” but “fail early and cheaply”

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PlayStation CEO Hermen Hulst wants the company to mitigate expensive risks with its future games, following last year’s high profile failure of live-service shooter Concord.


Speaking to Financial Times (via IGN), Hulst reflected on Concord’s failure in comparison to the huge success of mascot platformer Astro Bot. “I don’t want teams to always play it safe, but I would like for us, when we fail, to fail early and cheaply,” he said.


Playstation has now put into place more supervision of Sony’s owned studios, to ensure Concord’s fate isn’t repeated. “We have since put in place much more rigorous and more frequent testing in very many different ways,” said Hulst. “The advantage of every failure…is that people now understand how necessary that [oversight] is.”

9 Adorable Astro Bot Gameplay Moments & Features That’ll Melt Your Heart – ASTRO BOT GAMEPLAY REVIEWWatch on YouTube


Analysts estimate Concord cost Sony around $250m, but was infamously shut down just two weeks after launch, resulting in the closure of its developer Firewalk Studio. Astro Bot, meanwhile, sold 1.5m copies in its first month and, by March this year, had sold 2.3m copies.


As a result of Concord’s failure, Hulst suggested to FT PlayStation isn’t so intent on releasing live-service games as it once was. That mirrors comments from Sony’s chief financial officer Lin Tao earlier this month, who admitted the company’s live-service strategy is “not entirely going smoothly”.


Indeed, Bungie’s Marathon reboot was indefinitely delayed after its initial unveiling earlier this year.


Instead, Hulst’s strategy is to grow Sony’s IP into long-lasting franchises, just as Astro Bot has gained positive notoriety with each game released.


“We take a very intentional approach to IP creation…understanding how a new concept can turn into an iconic franchise for PlayStation, that can then again become a franchise for people beyond gaming,” said Hulst.

This is a news-in-brief story. This is part of our vision to bring you all the big news as part of a daily live report.



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Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds Still Doesn't Feel Like It Has An Identity Of Its Own
Game Updates

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds Still Doesn’t Feel Like It Has An Identity Of Its Own

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Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is quickly approaching the finish line, scheduled to launch in September. I got the chance to play the kart racer for a second time recently, and my opinion of the game is largely unchanged from my verdict during Summer Game Fest: It’s dropping the best aspects of its predecessors to become something closer to Mario Kart. This second session, I spent a little more time with the game, getting a chance to race on additional tracks and play as the previously unavailable Hatsune Miku and Ichiban Kasuga.

CrossWorlds sees you jump into a kart or onto a hoverboard and compete against several other racers from Sega’s catalog of Sonic characters (plus a few guests from other franchises!). Each race across the 24 different tracks is three laps, with the second taking place in an entirely different world after the racers teleport through a travel ring. Whichever competitor is in the lead as the racers approach the second lap chooses which world everyone hops over to, with two options given at random from a total pool of 15 other worlds.

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Now Playing: 8 Minutes of Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds Gameplay

It’s an interesting gimmick, best seen in the Grand Prix mode that was the focus of both the SGF preview and my latest hands-on. In that mode, you’re awarded a number of points depending on your place, which are added up at the end of a series of races to determine the ultimate winner. Each Grand Prix is four races, with the fourth and final race taking place across the three previous tracks–the first lap is on the track from the first race, the second lap is on the track of the second race, and so on.

As was the case at SGF, I crushed the computer-controlled competitors handily on the hardest available difficulty (there is one that’s even harder, but it has not been available in either preview). As fun as it is to win, it’s been hard to enjoy the game without the challenge of needing to try. I still believe that challenge will come when given the chance to play with other humans, but until then, CrossWorlds feels lacking compared to what came before.

Anyone else miss Sonic Riders?

The game borrows mechanics and features from Team Sonic Racing and Sonic Riders, but lacks the teamwork-oriented relay racing of the former or fuel management and character abilities of the latter. Those aspects made Team Sonic Racing and Sonic Riders distinct enough from Mario Kart to give them more identity, and also make them more challenging–it was rewarding to win at those games and I remember playing them (especially Riders) for hours upon hours and wanting to push myself to get better. I haven’t gotten that sensation from CrossWorlds yet.

Like all of the other characters, Hatsune and Ichiban have their own stats that affect the minutiae of play–making slight adjustments to how each kart handles in a race. It must be very slight though, as I didn’t notice any discernible difference between them, nor any change from my time with Jet the Hawk and Amy Rose at SGF. Changing up the plate loadout of the kart is a far more noticeable adjustment. I tinkered around with the kart plate system–which allows you to create several established loadouts to change how your kart behaves–a little more this time around, creating plates that let me start off with the monster truck transformation so I could run over everyone from the very start, or draft off others more easily and overtake the competition by stealing their rings, or spin like an unstoppable top while drifting to bash other racers and build extra speed boost.

With 24 tracks and 15 other worlds to explore, you’ll see plenty of strange sights throughout the race.

These plate builds are fun and zany, and I wish they had a bigger impact on my performance to encourage me to spend more time tinkering in the shop. But I won with them all and I didn’t really have to adjust my strategy for how I raced with any of them. I still needed to collect rings to build speed, pick up items to mess with opponents, dodge other racers’ items, and drift around corners. Like everything else, the customization features don’t help CrossWorlds differentiate itself from its competitors–nothing (so far) about this experience feels like it belongs solely to CrossWorlds.

I’m still hopeful that I’m just missing something. I generally enjoy the Sonic games that focus on racing, so this one not connecting with me feels like I’m somehow lying to myself. I’m sure that as soon as I sit down on the couch with my closest friends and we’re screaming at each other for the bullcrap that we manage to pull off, I’ll recognize in that moment what makes CrossWorlds special. Until that moment, however, I’m choosing to remain cautious of this one.

Sonic Racing CrossWorlds is launching for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and Switch on September 25. The game will be released for Switch 2 during the 2025 holiday season.



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Hermen Hulst, managing director and co-founder of Guerrilla Games, speaks during a Sony Corp. event ahead of the E3 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, California, U.S., on Monday, June 15, 2015.
Gaming Gear

After cancelling 8 of the 12 live service games Sony promised to release by 2025, PlayStation studios boss says the number doesn’t really matter: ‘What is important to me is having a diverse set of player experiences’

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By the time Sony started printing money releasing its exclusives onto PC, the company had made a name for itself delivering the biggest and best singleplayer games on the market. Its run of solo PS4 exclusives from Bloodborne to The Last of Us Part 2 was so strong that it blew Microsoft’s console strategy out of the water, in a way that the Xbox has arguably never recovered from. Even we PC heads with our vast Steam libraries had to acknowledge those games were pretty great.

Yet for the PlayStation 5, Sony decided it would almost completely ignore that legacy, and instead be all about live service. In 2022, former CEO Jim Ryan promised Sony would make and release 12 live-service games by 2025. As of 2025, only one of these—Helldivers 2—has enjoyed a successful launch. Seven were cancelled before release. Three are supposedly still in development (including the deeply troubled Marathon) and one of them was Concord.

It’s a strategy that has, so far, proven catastrophic, leaving the PS5 largely bereft of quality first-party exclusives. But if you thought gazing upon this virtual graveyard might cause Sony to reconsider its priorities, think again.


Related articles

Concord – Gameplay Trailer | PS5 Games – YouTube

Watch On

Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Studio Business Group CEO Herman Hulst was recently asked about Sony’s live-service strategy by the Financial Times (via GamesRadar), as part of an in-depth article about the company’s broader business strategy. “The number [of live-service releases] is not so important,” Hulst told the FT. “What is important to me is having a diverse set of player experiences and a set of communities.”

Instead of changing strategy to avoid massive live-service failures like Concord, or cancellations like The Last of Us Online, Hulst says he basically wants Sony to fail better. “I don’t want teams to always play it safe, but I would like for us, when we fail, to fail early and cheaply.”

To change these massive failures into, er, smaller failures, Hulst says PlayStation has implemented several new safeguards, such as “more rigorous and more frequent testing in many different ways.” According to the FT, this includes a higher priority on group testing, more cross pollination of ideas within Sony, and “closer relationships” between top executives. “The advantage of every failure…is that people now understand how necessary that [oversight] is.”

I would be more convinced by what Hulst says if Sony had demonstrated its PS4-era strategy no longer worked before going all in on chasing the theoretical live-service money train. Those glossy singleplayer titles were often enormously expensive to make, and selling games in general has become significantly harder over the last five years. But while Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 seems to have been a commercial disappointment, God of War: Ragnarok was the fastest-selling PlayStation title ever on launch in 2022, and had sold 15 million copies a full year before it came to PC in September last year.

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