PlayStation's Biggest Mistakes

PlayStation may be one of the biggest names in the gaming industry, but that doesn't mean it's immune to mess. In fact, the company has made some pretty major mistakes over the years, from overinvesting in ambitious projects to lacking faith in certain goals, showing that even the best can have their pitfalls.

However, these fumbles are mostly just blemishes on an otherwise pretty solid board, as PlayStation has for the most part remained a well-respected manufacturer in the gaming world since its inception. They show how successful companies can have many of their own problems and a few catastrophic mistakes, regardless of whether they have done well in the past.

Bloody

No sequel or remaster in sight

Details:

• Countless rumors but no concrete announcements

• Bluepoint is now disabled

Bloody is widely regarded as one of the best games of all time, but despite that recognition, it remains bogged down by a decade-old system. No matter how many times players asked for a sequel or a remaster, nothing ever seemed to come of it, and after so many leaks and potential rays of light at the end of the tunnel, it seems that now all chances have finally been lost.

Sony itself kept the name and kept it all to itself, and it seemed like it would stay that way until the end of time. However, Bluepoint, the team that worked on Soul of Demons remaster, introduced the idea of ​​a Bloody to remake at Sony and they actually approved the project, but FromSoftware themselves blocked the project, so the fate of the IP was once again uncertain. It's unclear if a remaster or sequel could happen sooner if Sony made the push, but the reality is that Bloody likely to remain in the past for the foreseeable future.

Concord

One of the biggest flops of all time

Details:

• Offline within two weeks

• Losses in the hundreds of millions

Concord was announced back in May 2023 with a cinematic trailer that first showed the cast of characters in a world that was supposed to shake up the PvP scene. When the game dropped a year later, it practically never took off, with very limited sales and player numbers, ultimately leading to it being discontinued just two weeks after launch.

The reasons for its failure are very open, but the most commonly cited were a lack of originality in an oversaturated market, as well as a $40 price tag for a game that stood alongside countless free-to-play titles within the same genre. Whatever the reason, the shutdown was reported to have cost PlayStation somewhere in the region of $200-400 million, making it one of the biggest disasters in gaming history.

The last of us online

No co-op apocalypses today

Details:

• Canceled internally due to concerns about going live

• Focus on single player games instead

The last of us online was a canceled multiplayer version of the cult zombie experience that was originally conceived as a standalone online game set in the same universe as the previous games. Developed by Naughty Dog, the project began as a multiplayer component for the sequel before evolving into a much larger live-service title with its own progression systems, world design, and long-term support plans.

However, as development progressed, the studio realized that the scope of the project expanded far beyond traditional multiplayer, and supporting the game with live services would require a large dedicated team at launch, which the developers simply could not accommodate. Whether or not the project would be successful remains a mystery, but it's still a shame that PlayStation and Naughty Dog couldn't find a way to make it happen in the end.

PS Vita

So close to handheld supremacy

Details:

• High entry price and memory cards

• Less support than PS4

Launched in 2011 as the successor to the Sony PSP, the PlayStation Vita promised near-console-quality gaming on a handheld device. It was technically impressive for its time, featuring an OLED display and powerful hardware capable of running ambitious titles like Uncharted: Golden Abyss, but the high price tag made the system struggle to achieve mainstream success and Sony gradually abandoned it.

Several factors contributed to the Vita's decline, such as expensive proprietary memory cards and a lack of major releases as many in-house studios focused on the fast-growing PlayStation 4. While it wasn't a complete failure, it would have been interesting to see another handheld in the mid-2010s as something to rival the global success of the Switch, but as a real hit today, the Vita ended up being more of a hit.

PS3 – PS2 backwards compatibility

Only some models can have fun

Details:

• Later PS3s no longer supported PS2 discs

• Hardened long-term console value

On startup, PlayStation 3 it initially supported backwards compatibility with the PlayStation 2's massive library, a feature that seemed like a natural extension of Sony's ecosystem. Early PS3 models featured real PS2 hardware or partial hardware emulation, allowing players to run most PS2 discs with few problems, but this feature would quickly die out over time.

In an effort to lower the retail price, Sony gradually removed functionality from later revisions of the PS3, and while this decision reduced costs, it also frustrated longtime PlayStation fans who expected seamless continuity between generations. Given the massive library and popularity of the PS2, abandoning backwards compatibility was widely seen as a missed opportunity, and PlayStation ultimately lost a strong selling point that could have boosted the PS3's early adoption and long-term value.