When your rising costs outpace your increase in profits you’re on collision-course with an unsustainable business model in the future. Seeing the projected budgets in the Insomniac leak honestly makes my head spin. Finding additional revenue streams through TV series and movies may be an effective band-aid that buys them more time, but they still need to fix the trajectory of their core business.
Shawn Layden warned the industry of exactly this situation. He rightly identified the impossibility of perpetual growth and tried to refocus on efficiency instead, but for some reason Sony doubled down on this business model while shutting the door on smaller, less expensive inhouse productions with the closure of Japan Studio for example. In my opinion Sony gave up on them too early and frankly didn’t even seem to know how to give them a fair chance at success in the modern era. Now the clock is ticking and they’re left throwing hail marys to find the golden goose in the live-service market.
Don’t get me wrong, the quality is certainly still there, but with the financial risk increasing, the willingness for creative risk is decreasing at the same time. Even if they find their super-successful live service game, I doubt investors will be happy to see them use that money to subsidize a AAA business model that may soon be on life support, financially speaking.
