Sony’s two new CEOs have shared their thinking and strategy for their multiplatform PlayStation releases moving forward.
This comes from Sony’s latest financial meeting, headed by Hermen Hulst and Hideaki Nishino.
PlayStation Studio Business Group CEO Hermen Hulst is the CEO in charge of the software side of the PlayStation business, so he’s really the one who is in charge of these decisions. This is what he said, as shared by Okami13_ on Twitter:
“We have a dual approach here, on the live service side we are releasing our titles simultaneously day in date on PlayStation 5 & PC but with our tentpole titles, our Singleplayer narrative driven titles, as you saw on the presentation the backbone of what PlayStation Studios has delivered in recent years and our history, we take a more strategic approach and we introduce our great franchises to new audiences.
We’re finding new audiences that are potentially going to be very interested in playing sequels on the PlayStation platform. We have high hopes that we are actually able to bring new players into PlayStation at large, but into PlayStation platforms specifically.”
Hideaki Nishino is CEO for PlayStation’s Platform Business Group. So he’s in charge of the console side, and he sees the former console exclusives being brought to PC. For his part, he had this to say about any worries investors might have about the current strategy:
“The value of console will continue to remain.. Rather then cannibalization I think this is an opportunity for growth.”
Sony is in an interesting position as they revealed in their financial report. The PlayStation division is more financially successful now than it has ever been in prior console generations. But what Sony’s report isn’t talking about, that we also know, is that much of that profit came in the peak of the pandemic quarantine and lockdown period.
The entire gaming industry benefited from that period, but some companies did not properly recognize that it would not extend indefinitely. Hermen and Hideaki didn’t have anything to say about the many PlayStation employees they fired over the past year, which included the developers making these games.
Sony did demonstrate an interest in PC gaming many years before this. Through Sony Online Entertainment, they brought the PC exclusive Planetside franchise for years, and they also had the first Helldivers made as a demonstration of cross platform functionality between PC and PlayStation. The current strategy to bring PlayStation games to PC, is a necessary evil, because first party games are no longer sufficiently profitable if they only relied on PlayStation owners.
But if we think about this in terms of what potential future outcome we could see, we could see a future PlayStation that makes more live service games that are cross platform, than they make single player games that go to PlayStation first and PC later. Avid PlayStation fans may say one thing, but their purchasing decisions say another – and we know which of those two things Sony cares about.
