Sony fans aren’t exactly in a great place this year. The current head of PlayStation, Hiroki Totoki, flat out confirmed that they don’t have any big scale first party AAAs scheduled to release for all of this financial year, and we are at month one of that period.
Sony’s solution thus far has been to push their console exclusives, including Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and the upcoming Stellar Blade. But that doesn’t mean Sony doesn’t have any first party games for the year.
As reported by PlayStation LifeStyle, Jeff Grubb has revealed that he believes Sony will be releasing a few first party titles in their next media presentation. Grubb shared prior rumors that that next event will not be a State of Play, but the bigger Showcase event.
After Grubb shared his rumor, another person teased that an Astro Bot title could be one of those games Sony is ready to reveal. While Astro Bot’s games haven’t been big scale, they have functioned as testimonials for the PlayStation 5’s capabilities. Of course, they have also been fine games in their own right as well.
The truth is, Sony gamers won’t really be lacking for games if the studio doesn’t release any more of their own games. They still have the market leader in market share compared to Xbox. They also have robust third party support, with a significant number of exclusive games on that front.
But it absolutely makes a difference when Sony releases their own first party games. That is to say, it’s very important to Sony that they release their own AAA games for their own console. Sony may make a lot of revenue from their cut from third party games, but they see more money from their own games.
Sony isn’t exactly a victim of their own success right now, but the lack of AAAs ready to release this year is due to a few mistakes. Now, it’s true that Sony made plans for a significant number of live service games, some of which have already been cancelled.
But Sony fans would be mistaken to think that the issue lies in the live service games. The thing is, AAA video games now take five or more years to make. Sony failed to anticipate that they would end up without any such AAAs ready this year, and this was something they should have prepared for five years ago, or even earlier.
This Astro Bot title, if it’s really coming, would most likely be a smaller project. It may be that Sony will evaluate how successful this release is, and decide to make more smaller scale titles in the future.
