Speaking to Axios, PlayStation Studios head Herman Hulst revealed candidly that the company might reverse course and go back to making PlayStation 4 games.
This was Hulst’s statement on the matter, specifically when asked about making PlayStation 4 backwards ports of games that are already on the PlayStation 5:
“We certainly don’t want to forget the millions of active players on PS4, and we want to ensure there are great games for them as well. We’re evaluating it on a case-by-case basis.”
For the sake of reviewing, Sony had previously stated that they intended to make PlayStation 4 games until 2025. They made this statement earlier this year, indicating that the platform held over 60 % of the PlayStation Store’s total revenue.
While the PlayStation 5 has a considerably larger user base at this point, shortages stemming from its launch have hampered the console’s ability to hit the top spots of best selling consoles charts. To be fair, sales charts ranking isn’t really that important for Sony or other video game companies in the long run. That sort of thing may be popular for gamers to talk about and for company marketing, what really matters is how much money they make from their consoles, games, and accessories.
The real big problem is even with the user base the PlayStation 5 has, Sony is somewhat hampered from making exclusives because there will be a hard limit to how many people will get to play such games. The game developers would certainly not feel great that there are considerably less people playing their games than is possible. But limiting these games’ ability to make money also harms Sony itself.
Hulst already gestured about this in an interview with Reuters. Sony is going all in on all the ways they can make revenue that isn’t making games for the PlayStation 5. That includes porting games from the PlayStation 4 to PC, even DRM-free on a platform like GOG, making mobile games, and making movies based on their first party IP.
With all this in mind, it really isn’t that surprising at all that Sony is considering making new PlayStation 4 games again. The PlayStation 4 has a userbase of over 100 million, and many loyal PlayStation users are still playing on the console instead of the PlayStation 5. In most cases, this is because they just could not get their hands on a PlayStation 5. For Sony, it really isn’t a matter of whether their consumers are loyal and trying to get PlayStation 54 consoles out of fandom. What they see is that the industry is not working the way it is supposed to right now, so they have to come up with new ways to make money for now and survive for when it all becomes normal again.
Of course, depending on where you sit, or specifically what console you have, this may come across as good or bad news. There is an existential dilemma here, in that Sony can’t make cutting edge games that push forward the company’s technical and artistic vision for the medium like in other generations. The PlayStation 5’s innovative features, like their DualSense controllers, aren’t worth investing in, at least not right now. Sony is somewhat stuck making games at a PlayStation 4 level, which is great for fans, but also essentially means Sony’s studios will be coasting for the next few years.
If PlayStation 5 owners aren’t necessarily the priority for Sony in the immediate future, they should still expect Sony to deliver content to satisfy them. At the very least, Sony are going to be making multi-generation, multi-platform games for the foreseeable future. They have already confirmed they are moving forward with PSVR2, which will be an even smaller segment of the PlayStation 5 userbase.
Source: TheGamer
