Bend Studio: Future Projects Still Planned Despite Cancellation

Bend Studio, the developer behind Days Gone, remains committed to creating exciting new games despite Sony's cancellation of their unannounced live-service title. This cancellation, along with another at Bluepoint Games (reportedly a live-service God of War title), followed a string of setbacks for Sony's live-service initiatives. While Helldivers 2 achieved phenomenal success, other ventures, notably Concord, faced disastrous launches and swift closures. This prompted reflection from Sony executives, who cited issues like insufficient early user testing, internal organizational silos, and poor release window timing as contributing factors to Concord's failure. Sony's president, COO, and CFO, Hiroki Totoki, emphasized the need for earlier development checkpoints and better coordination across teams to avoid future miscalculations. Despite these challenges, Bend Studio's community manager, Kevin McAllister, assured fans that the studio will continue to develop compelling games. While Bend Studio's last release was Days Gone in 2019 (with a PC port in 2021), their future projects remain unannounced. Sony's financial report highlighted the contrasting fates of Helldivers 2 and Concord, emphasizing the lessons learned from both successes and failures to inform future live-service game development. Despite the setbacks, several PlayStation live-service games are still under development, including titles from Bungie, Guerrilla, and Haven Studios.