Concord was supposed to be the next big live-service title from PlayStation, but after two weeks in the market and the realization that this wasn’t going to be the case, the game was pulled from stores and refunds were given. It was an unprecedented event, something no one thought would happen so soon. Following this, PlayStation took a step back and has seemingly slowed down their live-service initiative. Now, in a new interview with the Financial Times, Herman Hulst, CEO, Sony Interactive Entertainment, talks about Concord‘s impact and how they’ve changed the way they do things during development so something like Concord‘s failure doesn’t happen again.
Hulst says that there is a stricter and a more thorough testing process now, so they can identify things early. “I don’t want teams to always play it safe, but I would like for us, when we fail, to fail early and cheaply. We have since put in place much more rigorous and more frequent testing in very many different ways,” he said. “The advantage of every failure . . . is that people now understand how necessary that [oversight] is.”
Other new measures that were implemented include more of a focus on group testing, learning from other Sony teams, and building closer relationships between the executives who spend hundreds of hours playing games before they’re released.
Hulst also talked about how their live-service plans have changed and evolved since its inception. Back in 2022, previous CEO Jim Ryan revealed the plan to release 12 live service games by the end of its 2025 fiscal year. Now, as Hulst puts it, it wasn’t about the number but the variety and quality.
“We have since put in place much more rigorous and more frequent testing in very many different ways,” he said. “The advantage of every failure . . . is that people now understand how necessary that [oversight] is.”