Sony’s approach to live service games has been flawed since the beginning but Gran Turismo 7 shows a more successful alternative.
While there’s yet to be any real news on Gran Turismo 8, aside from a vague hint that it’s already in development, developer Polyphony Digital clearly isn’t under any pressure to release it in a hurry.
Despite turning four years old last month, Gran Turismo 7 is still seeing new updates, with its latest dropping earlier today and adding three new cars: the Porsche 911 Turbo S Leichtbau (964) ’93, the Renault Twingo ’93, and the Yangwang U9 ’24.
The update, as detailed on the PlayStation Blog, also includes new events and Power Pack challenges, which makes it clear that Gran Turismo 7 is essentially a live service game. That in turn makes you question why Sony is constantly trying to make new online shooters, when one of their existing exclusives shows a much more viable alternative.
You’ll already be aware of how badly Sony has fumbled its live service game plans. It once boldly promised 12 of them by 2026 and yet here we are and it’s only launched three of them – Helldivers 2, Concord, and Marathon – one of which didn’t last a month.
The failure of Concord must’ve led to some self-reflection within Sony because despite continued plans for more live service games, like Horizon Hunters Gathering, a lot of them have reportedly been cancelled and the company is apparently pivoting back to single-player games.
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PlayStation 5 fans have already raked Sony across the coals for this but in reality Sony has had a winning formula for a live service game since 2022 and it’s not even free-to-play.
Sony never shared official sales figures for Gran Turismo 7, but with the entire series having sold over 100 million units worldwide, Gran Turismo 7 must’ve sold at least 10 million copies based on public sales figures for the rest of the games.
Alinea Analytics claims that Gran Turismo 7 has surpassed 11 million copies since launch, with 81% of them being on PlayStation 5 and the rest on PlayStation 4. If so, this comfortably makes Gran Turismo 7 the second best-selling PlayStation 5 game ever, behind only Spider-Man 2.
This also doesn’t take into account how much money Gran Turismo 7’s microtransactions have been generating, since you can purchase in-game currency with which to obtain new cars.
There’s no way to confirm player numbers but they must be consistently strong if Polyphony is still pumping out content updates, running timed events, and holding tournaments all these years later.
Gran Turismo 7 may never have been billed as a live service game, but it fits the mould perfectly, despite Sony seemingly taking no lessons from it.
What Sony should really be doing is looking at which games already lend themselves well to the live service formula, instead of trying to rework almost every franchise it has to fit just one mould.
God Of War, for instance, may have dabbled in multiplayer before, thanks to God Of War: Ascension, but it’s primarily been a single-player series and thus ill-suited for Sony’s live service ambitions.
Sony recognised this and cancelled a God Of War live service project before it was even announced, but this wasted time and energy developer Bluepoint Games could’ve spent on literally anything else and likely contributed to the studio’s eventual and tragic closure earlier this year.
To fair, the more traditional live service game Helldivers 2 has been a success and, more recently, so has Marathon, which was the fourth best-selling game in the US last month. The former, though, was only published by Sony and it’s not even clear if it was part of the original 12 titles they initially announced.
Sony’s general approach has been to make single-player studios like Bluepoint and Naughty Dog suddenly pivot to a style of game they are unfamiliar with, so no wonder success has been fleeting.
Sony still has the Horizon game and the eternally absent Fairgame$ to come, but if it ever wants to keep pumping out similar games beyond that, perhaps the best thing to do is to let them happen organically.
The situation is reminiscent of Animal Crossing which has always been a de facto live service title and yet Nintendo never emphasised the constant updates and cut support short for no reason. Sony aren’t that bad but it does feel like they’re too eager to just follow the crowd, when one of their existing games is already doing things its own way.
A game like Gran Turismo 8 doesn’t necessarily need to be advertised as a live service, but it can so easily be run like one.
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