PlayStation London is pivoting from VR games to live-service games

Sony has revealed via an interview with GamesIndustry that its PlayStation London Studio (which previously focused on virtual reality game development) is now working on a live services title. It will be a fantasy co-op combat game set in modern-day London. Given the studio's history with Sony's experimental hardware technologies (think EyeToy games, SingStar, and of course The London Heist), it's notable that Sony is taking one of its more experimental branches and putting them on live-services duty.

Studio co-head Stuart Whyte told GamesIndustry that with its new project, the studio wanted to "explore some new avenues and set ourselves some new challenges." 

The only other details about PlayStation London Studio's new game are that it's being built specifically for PlayStation 5 on the team's SoHo engine, and that the team "got inspiration" from their colleagues at Guerrilla Games.

The rest of PlayStation London's conversation with GamesIndustry focused on the company's studio culture. It appears that this might be another instance of a high-profile developer teasing its next game in order to bolster its recruiting efforts.

What are Sony's other live-service plans?

Over the summer, Sony made public its intent to put more first-party live service games into production. It's currently got studios like Bungie and Jetpack Interactive working on new live service titles. Elsewhere, Naughty Dog is both working on a multiplayer spinoff of The Last of Us and a new project with PlayStation Visual Arts. 

If we follow Sony's summer announcements, none of these games appear to be the three live service titles that Sony wants online by the end of the year (one of those games is MLB The Show 22).

With this many games in production however, Sony is well underway with its plans to have 12 first-party live service games operational by 2025. That likely means this isn't the last we've heard of existing PlayStation studios jumping into live game development.