In the release of their financial figures tonight, Sony included an interesting slide in their presentation talking about the Evolving Shape of First-Party Portfolio. Specifically, this is with PlayStation 5 and PlayStation Studios. Sony is looking to release “two or more major releases every year”. Looking back to 2022, this mostly aligns with what the company did for new titles.
Last year, PlayStation Studios released both Horizon Forbidden West and God of War Ragnarok as their brand new heavy hitters of the year. While these are both action titles, this does align with what Sony is attempting to do by releasing two major titles a year.
Additionally in this segment about major releases, Sony also states it wants to cover “every major genre”. It states that PS Studios is made up of six genre outputs: Sports, Shooter, Racing, RPG, Platformer, and Action titles. This will be accomplished via a mix of both Single Player and Live Service titles, with those games being of “big franchises and new IP”.
Live service is an area Sony is heavily focused on, which can be evidently seen with their recent acquisition of Bungie, creators of Destiny. The company believes that this will guide their financials to where they need to be, so they will be heavily investing in titles like these in the upcoming years.
Last year, PlayStation Chief Jim Ryan stated to GamesIndustry.biz that he thinks the “trend towards live services will continue, and if you look for a model in our category of entertainment, which supports sustained engagement over a long period of time, live services games arguably fit that bill better than a subscription service.”
Just tonight, it was revealed that 30% of PlayStation Plus subscribers make up the higher tier. That is 14.1 million users, which is split between the Premium and Extra tiers. On PlayStation Plus, Jim Ryan also told GI.biz “Our PlayStation Plus subscriber number has grown from zero in 2010, to 48 million now. And we anticipate, for our services, that we will see further growth for the subscriber number.”
For more on PlayStation’s upcoming portfolio of titles, be sure to check out our coverage of tomorrow’s PlayStation Showcase!
