When PlayStation announced its quarterly financial results, the company announced that there would be no major games until at least 2025. Gamers are therefore preparing for a rather quiet year, but not on all platforms. Indeed, the studio seems to want to affirm today that the PC ecosystem is increasingly attractive. Hiroki Totoki, who replaces Jim Ryan at the head of Sony Interactive Entertainment for the moment, explains that the pace of releases on this platform will accelerate.
We already knew that PlayStation wanted to bet more on PC players for its biggest franchises. While Xbox seems to want to open the doors of its exclusives to its competitors' consoles, after having conquered the mobile and PC fields, the extension of its activity becomes a necessity for PlayStation, at the risk of seeing its progress stagnate. During a telephone call with investors, Hiroki Totoki declares:
“In the past, as you all know, we wanted to popularize [our] console, and the main objective of the first-party titles was to make the console popular. […] if you have strong first-party content, not only on our console but also on other platforms like PC, it can be developed across multiple platforms, which can help improve operating profit. So that’s another area that we want to work on proactively. I personally think there are opportunities to improve, so I’d like to be aggressive in improving our margins.”
A plan already in place
This does not give us any precise figures on the evolution that Sony is aiming for. Several months ago, the company announced that by 2025, 50% of PlayStation games would be available on mobile and PC, up to 30% on PC and 20% on mobile. This would simply double the presence of the brand's franchises in these two ecosystems. For the moment, we do not know where the company is in its plan. But it promises to accelerate its strategy.
This could result in a reduced waiting time. Currently, you have to wait several years before being able to play major licenses on PC. For example, God of War (2018) took 4 years, 3 years for Horizon Zero Dawn, 2 years for its sequel Horizon Forbidden West or 2 years for Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart. With its more “aggressive” method, we could imagine that Sony would make its games available after only a few months, knowing that sales of its games slow down sharply a few weeks after their release.
Nothing is certain for now, so we will have to be patient to find out what PlayStation has in store for us.
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