Sony appears to be shifting gears to a ‘multi-platform’ approach.
This is based on an internal Sony slide that leaked as part of the recent Insomniac ransomware leak. That leak included Insomniac information, such as the personal information of their employees.
We will discuss the leaked information below. We can’t ignore this news, but we will point out the way the information was obtained was particularly unethical. You may want to consider this yourself before you go forward with reading this news. But, like Pandora’s Box, it isn’t possible for us to just close the box and pretend nobody found out what they did.
As shared by PostUp_SOG on Twitter, the slide has a diagram illustrating Sony’s future plans. Most of this seems a bit abstract, but under the heading First Party Initiatives, Sony has added the caption ‘Everywhere Experience’, as well as a highlighted note on the side of market expansion. Under that heading, Sony has itemized these three:
- Multi-platform
- Multi-reach
- Multi-access
We will point out here that nowhere does Sony name any actual platforms.
Sony’s gaming side has already expanded their business beyond PlayStation. Most gamers will read that previous sentence and assume that it is about PlayStation Studios publishing games on PC. That’s true but there’s also more than that.
Sony is also publishing games on mobile, with and without the PlayStation brand. Fate/Grand Order, a hit on iOS and Android in its native Japan, is published by Sony Music subsidiary Aniplex, and was cited as a major revenue driver for a significant number of years. This title has no connection with PlayStation, but it benefited parent company Sony.
Sony is also in the business of making gaming accessories, for PlayStation and PC. You may already know about PlayStation headsets, for example, but Sony also has a separate Inzone brand, that makes its own headsets. These headsets work for both PlayStation and PC.
Now, gamers have dismissed the idea that Sony would publish games on Xbox and Nintendo platforms, but that’s a mistake. They’re already publishing MLB The Show games on both platforms, and PC. Console fanboys may not like to think about it, but this business is already inherently contradictory as it is.
With all that said, most observers and insiders do not take the prospect of PlayStation Studios bringing all their games to Xbox seriously. If anything, this initiative could indicate that Sony will finally take PC seriously enough, by bringing their future first party games to PlayStation 5 and PC on the same day and date.
And if Sony continues to struggle to improve their game sales on their own PlayStation 5 platform, this looks like the right move to take. Sony simply hasn’t tried it, and the upside to making PC gamers feel that they are better catered to is potentially high.
This could also delay game releases as Sony’s studios have to make their games for two platforms simultaneously, but if it makes their games more profitable, that will make the effort worthwhile.
