Sony is throwing in the towel on its streaming TV service, PlayStation Vue, with the announcement the service will close down early next year.

“Today we are announcing that we will shut down the PlayStation Vue service on January 30, 2020. Unfortunately, the highly competitive Pay TV industry, with expensive content and network deals, has been slower to change than we expected. Because of this, we have decided to remain focused on our core gaming business,” the company said on its blog.

PlayStation Vue debuted over four years ago, but was immediately met with two difficulties that proved insurmountable:

1. Many wrongly believed the service was only available to those owning a PlayStation gaming console. While there are over 100 million PlayStation 4 units in use today, a significant number of cord-cutters do not own any gaming console and thought that put PlayStation Vue out of reach.
2. Sony has no ties to other TV providers, making it impossible to get the kinds of volume discounts available to large satellite, telco TV, and cable operators. As the costs of video programming continue to increase, PlayStation Vue losses widened for Sony and left customers looking for savings off a traditional cable TV bill frustrated by increasing rates for streaming providers. PlayStation Vue hiked rates $5 a month last July, reaching $50 a month, and it was clear more rate hikes would be needed in the future.

PlayStation Vue was always a money loser for Sony and reportedly has around 500,000 subscribers — a relatively small number in comparison to services like Sling and AT&T TV Now. Within the last week, reports leaked out that Sony was looking for a buyer for PlayStation Vue, but apparently could not find one that met the company’s terms. Sony is under pressure by Wall Street activist investor Daniel Loeb, who wants the company to restructure and eliminate money-losing services like PlayStation Vue to boost Sony’s stock price.

PlayStation Vue primarily offered live feeds of linear TV channels. Linear TV viewing is on the decline as viewers increasingly move towards on-demand viewing and services like Netflix and Hulu that deliver plenty of that content at a much lower cost.