PlayStation CEO prefers that projects "fail early and cheaply" following Concord's expensive flop

Following the major failure of PlayStation’s Concord last year, Studio Business Group CEO Hermen Hulst has stated that the company would rather its failures come “early and cheaply” during development.

The details:

• Speaking with the Financial Times, Hulst discussed how PlayStation plans to avoid high-profile failures, such as Concord, while simultaneously allowing its studios to experiment with unique concepts, resulting in titles such as 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 explained.
• Concord was a hero shooter created by Sony first-party developer Firewalk Studios that was shut down just weeks after its launch in August 2024. While the game itself was met with generally positive reviews, its player count was in the double digits at launch, resulting in Sony pulling the plug on it, refunding buyers, and shutting down Firewalk. While unconfirmed, it has been reported that its development costs totaled $250 million.
• Hurst shared that Sony has since tightened its testing process for new projects, with the company attempting to catch potential failures before more resources are spent on their creation. "We have since put in place much more rigorous and more frequent testing in very many different ways," Hulst said. "The advantage of every failure...is that people now understand how necessary that [oversight] is."

More PlayStation news:

• A former PlayStation executive has said that Xbox Game Pass-like subscriptions are a “danger” and make developers become "wage slaves."
• Helldivers 2 is officially receiving a crossover with Halo, bringing ODSTs and various weapons to the PlayStation title.