Sony shuts down another new studio! PS5 generation strategy completely collapses.

March 24, 2026 - Sony PlayStation's internal purge continues.

According to a report by Bloomberg senior journalist Jason Schreier, Sony has officially shut down its Dark Outlaw Games studio.

The studio was founded in 2025 by Jason Blundell, a key figure in the Call of Duty Zombies mode, and it lasted less than a year from its inception to its dissolution.

This shutdown has once again sparked fierce criticism from the industry regarding the "disastrous" management capabilities of Sony's current leadership. Since 2020, several of the seven studios acquired (or established) by Sony have been shut down.

A review of Sony's recent records is truly alarming:

In 2023, the company spent .6 billion to acquire Bungie, but the result was only massive layoffs and the delay of "Marathon" due to plagiarism controversies and poor marketing.

In 2023, they acquired Firewalk, which ultimately produced Concord, one of the biggest disasters in gaming history. The studio was then quickly shut down in 2024.

Since acquiring Bluepoint in 2021, the company has failed to produce any new games and was shut down earlier this year; Haven Studios' Fairgame$ has also been without any substantial updates.

In addition, a series of projects, including The Last of Us online game, Spider-Man multiplayer game, and Bend Studio's service games, have all been thrown into the trash.

Former CEO Jim Ryan had planned to launch 12 service games by 2026, but the reality was harsh: apart from the success of Bunker 2, almost all the other projects failed, either being canceled before release or dying at lightning speed like Starscream.

In 2026, while Sony's PS5 Pro is working hard to close the gap in image quality with PSSR technology, it is facing an unprecedented talent shortage in content creation.