‘I would like for us, when we fail, to fail early and cheaply’: PlayStation Studios head says Concord taught a big lesson
Hermen Hulst says Sony does “much more rigorous” testing now
PlayStation’s Studio Business Group CEO Hermen Hulst says he wants future failures to be identified and dealt with earlier in the development process.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Hulst explained that the company had been putting in more measures to lessen the impact of any games that fail to meet its standards.
Hulst’s comments refer to the failure of Concord, which was reportedly in development for around eight years and made it all the way to full release, before – just two weeks after it launched – Sony announced plans to take it offline, pull the game from sale, and offer refunds to all players who bought it, citing a poor reception from players.
According to Hulst, new measures have been put in place to make sure potential problems are spotted far sooner, saying: “I don’t want teams to always play it safe, but I would like for us, when we fail, to fail early and cheaply.”
Hulst explained that PlayStation has implemented a stricter and more thorough testing process now, with the aim being to identify potential issues early.
“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.”
According to the report, some of the new measures 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.
During a business briefing back in 2022, Sony Interactive Entertainment‘s then-president Jim Ryan revealed plans to release 12 live service games by the end of its 2025 fiscal year. In this new interview Hulst appeared to dismiss this target, saying what was more important wasn’t the number of games but their variety and quality.
“The number [of live-service releases] is not so important,” he said. “What is important to me is having a diverse set of player experiences and a set of communities.
Earlier this month Sony CFO Lin Tao said the company will learn from its live service failures, but insists that progress has been made despite them.
During a Q&A session following Sony’s latest financial results, Tao said that despite the negativity surrounding Sony’s live service offerings thanks to the issues with Concord and Marathon, she still believes live service games are worthwhile because they’ve added a revenue stream that didn’t exist for the company five years ago.
