Sony has now revealed plans to delay six out of their twelve planned live service titles.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, Sony President, COO, and CFO, Hiroki Totoki, made this statement in the company’s latest earnings call:
“We are reviewing this… we are trying as much as possible to ensure [these games] are enjoyed and liked by gamers for a long time. [Of] the 12 titles, six titles will be released by FY25 – that’s our current plan. [As for] the remaining six titles, we are still working on that.
That’s the total number of live service and multiplayers titles [and] mid-to-long-term we want to [push] this kind of service and that’s the unchanged policy of the company. It’s not like we stick to certain titles, but game quality should be the most important [thing].”
Totoki is scheduled to take over as CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, AKA the PlayStation division. To be clear, Totoki is one of the most high level executives on top of Sony as a whole. PlayStation has been a very successful division, but comparatively small compared to all of Sony.
As reported in this Nikkei profile, Totoki is expected to ‘tighten cost controls’ as incoming head of PlayStation. In his current position, Totoki does already have control over PlayStation’s budget. Since the division was headed and founded by Ken Kutaragi, however, PlayStation has had a lot of freedom to make their own decisions, including towards what the company will invest in.
Many times, PlayStation’s relative freedom has led to inter-company squabbling. For example, former PlayStation CEO Kaz Hirai was a frequent target of many higher ups in Sony as he steered the PlayStation 3’s fortunes.
While Jim Ryan has technically not yet left his post, it’s easy to guess that this decision came from Totoki and not him. Florian Mueller, who famously covered the Microsoft – Activision deal and correctly predicted that Microsoft would close the deal, has some interesting commentary on this situation.
On Twitter, Florian speculates that one possible reason for Jim Ryan’s pending exit from the company is Sony’s upcoming “changes to the business model.” Those changes would be the dimmer prospects Sony’s live service games are facing, now that many other companies have rolled back or completely shut down their own live service projects.
However, Sony is still moving forward with a staggering six live service projects in the near future. Sony’s ability to make such games and make them successful money makers is in high doubt right now, but it’s entirely possible for the company to turn that around as they release said games.
