Bluepoint Games’ doors are closed. Five years after Sony stepped through them to welcome the developer’s staff into the warm embrace of the PlayStation Studios family, they have been locked for good. Without releasing a single game, another acquisition has been swallowed by the void that modern PlayStation is increasingly transforming into. A place where “Play Has No Limits”, but seemingly also no plan. In the last seven years, 10 different studios have been acquired by Sony. Half of those have never released a game. Three now don’t even exist. It’s bleak, and yet another sign that Sony has seemingly lost its way over the course of the PS5 generation.
Bluepoint did valuable work. In the PS3 era, it brought classics like Metal Gear Solid 3 into the high-definition era. On the PS4, it took Team Ico’s masterpiece, Shadow of the Colossus – undoubtedly one of my favourite games of all time – and remade it with stunning graphical clarity. This remake lent the console a taste of PlayStation’s earlier dedication to experimental art projects presented in blockbuster wrapping, a dedication that’s faded over the years.
By the launch of the PS5, Bluepoint had graduated from solid remasters to cutting-edge remakes. Its recreation of Demon’s Souls remains to this day one of the console’s most graphically accomplished games, and its careful replication of FromSoftware’s precursor to Dark Souls reminded us all why this timeless action RPG laid the groundwork for a genre that would define a generation. And yet despite this triumph, Demon’s Souls was Bluepoint’s final release.
The Texas-based studio was acquired by Sony in 2021, following the successful launch of Demon’s Souls. Now brought in house, a legion of FromSoft fans kept their fingers crossed – if the studio could do this with Demon’s Souls, just imagine what it could do with a Bloodborne remake.
Four years of quiet development followed. Then, in early 2025, news broke: the studio had been working on its first original title, but it had been cancelled. Sony confirmed that it had been a live service game, and later reports would claim it was an online God of War project. Just over 12 months later, Bluepoint would cease to exist altogether. It begs the question: What was the plan here?
“The studio’s brilliant re-creation of Demon’s Souls for the PS5 launch proves that @bluepointgames knows @PlayStation games inside and out”, read a tweet by then PlayStation head Hermen Hulst, posted upon Bluepoint’s acquisition. But to what extent did PlayStation know what was best to do with Bluepoint?
I can see a sliver of sense in buying Bluepoint and tasking its talent with crafting a new experience in a beloved universe like God of War. After all, the studio is more experienced than most at working with established IP, and one of its very first projects was the God of War Collection for PS3 that remastered the original two games in the series. But a live service game is no easy project, and while recruitment can fill gaps in expertise, there’s no denying that this was a huge pivot for a studio whose (almost) entire back catalogue was single-player remakes and remasters. This was a team of gifted technicians, artists, and engineers who could reignite the spirit of the games of yesteryear… was there no project they were better suited to?
Just days ago, Sony concluded its State of Play stream with the announcement of a ground-up remake of the original God of War trilogy. The decision to shutter what was surely the perfect developer to helm this project (at least outside of Santa Monica Studio) looks utterly baffling. For a company so interested in remakes, it had the masters of the art at its disposal for the entire span of this generation. And yet Sony funded Bluepoint’s eventual demise by chasing a live-service trend that proved futile.
It all comes back to mismanagement, and the feeling that PlayStation has lost track of what tools it has purchased and the way in which they should be optimally used. Bluepoint certainly showed pedigree when breathing new life into the classics, but a live-service Kratos game? I’m not sure that was ever going to be the right move for a developer who worked exclusively on single-player projects until its acquisition. And that’s before you consider just how much of an enigma the field appears to be for Sony.
Live-service has haunted PlayStation this entire generation. At the same time it cancelled Bluepoint’s God of War project, it also canned another live service game in development at Bend Studio (again, another team with single-player pedigree). Before that, Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us online game was halted. The closure of Firewalk Studio in 2024, following the disastrous launch of Concord, still feels fresh. Seemingly undeterred by such failures, Sony continues to push on: the newly announced Horizon: Hunters Gathering comes from the franchise’s creator, Guerilla Games, and will see it attempt to transform another single–player IP into some kind of online experience. Despite a pivot in art style and gameplay approach, I by no means think Hunters Gathering looks bad. But in a world where instant internet reactions often serve as bad omens for games of this kind, I expect Sony are eying the negative critical response to the reveal trailer with some trepidation.
I’ll always choose to hope for the best. But honestly, I expect we’ll all be experiencing similar feelings of despair before 2026 ends. Will we ever see Fairgames or hear again from its developer, Haven Studios, before the plug is pulled on another live-service shooter experiment? Will Marathon successfully take on Arc Raiders, or will it spell disaster for Bungie? And what about Media Molecule? A studio once at the core of Sony’s creativity, it gave us the endlessly joyful and novel LittleBigPlanet, Tearaway, and Dreams. The latter’s support has now ended, and there’s presumably a new game in the pipeline — if that’s a trend-chaser rather than an original idea, then we can really start to worry about the direction of Sony’s studio portfolio, and how much will be left of it by the time the PS6 comes around.
There’s by no means an easy fix, but surely there are steps that can be made. Smaller development cycles, bucking trends, and encouraging exciting, new ideas are among them. But just understanding the talent at your disposal and putting it to use in the most logical way possible is the right starting point. You wouldn’t buy a new sofa without first measuring to see if it fits in your living room, and then, when this enormous sofa is delivered, stick it in the bedroom and use it to sleep on. So why would you spend millions on a games studio renowned for high-class single-player remakes, and then ignore that honed skillset and set them to work on an online live-service game? I know it sounds simple on paper, and maybe I’m not seeing the complexities. But regardless of what I can or cannot see, without change, I fear Bluepoint will not be the last to suffer from this frustrating lack of smart direction. This acquisition before innovation mindset has plagued the modern games industry, drowning talent in acts of harmful consolidation. It has to stop.
Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.
