First the good news. Sony assured investors that Spiderman 2 by Marvel will be released this fiscal year, which ends for the company on March 31, 2024. Previously, Insomniac Games studio announced the fall of 2023. But this probably has not changed (insiders most often mention September). However, it looks to be weaker in terms of gaming.
Sony wants to sell 25 million PS5 consoles during the fiscal year, which is more than any PlayStation in history. In the previous fiscal year, it was 19.1 million units. If the corporation succeeds, then the PS5 will go down in history, as even the PS2 did not manage to sell so many units in one fiscal year.
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LESS SALES GAMES
At the same time, Sony expects less sales of own games. Unfortunately, she didn’t elaborate on why she expects less interest in games made by the PlayStation Studios teams. However, it was immediately speculated that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 could be the only major game this year. But such conjectures are not supported by anything. However, at the moment, Sony really only has a sequel to the adventure of the spider, announced for the coming months.
“We are trying to create completely new brands, release games for PC and strengthen the development of games with live services,” added a representative of Sony. In doing so, he reaffirmed the previous strategy of focusing not only on single-player story games, but also on multiplayer online games. One of them will be a separate multiplayer action game in the world of The Last of Us, which is being developed by Naughty Dog. Guerrilla Games is preparing a cooperative game from the world of Horizon.
Toyo Securities analyst Hideki Yasuda notes for Bloomberg weak software acceleration and de facto stagnation of online services. The PlayStation is doing well with PS5 sales (total 38.4 million units shipped), so the hardware business is in perfect shape, but the other two parts are struggling.
“Hardware sales are up in line with Sony forecasts, but acceleration in software, the most profitable part of the gaming business, remains weak.” Yasuda told Bloomberg, pointing to a $2.5 million drop in software sales from the same period in the previous fiscal year. 68 million games have been sold.. 9.5 million units were in-house games from PlayStation Studios, down 5 million. 70% of software sold is digital, down 1% from the same period last year.
CANCELLED PROJECTS
Shuhei Yoshida, in charge of indie developers at PlayStation, doesn’t want live service games to dominate the industry because he finds them more boring. However, Sony wants to launch by 2025 up to 12 such projects. To support and continue to consider PlayStation the best place to play, they experiment with research and take on new ideas. But as Yoshida showed, many of them will fail and be cancelled.
“We will make a prototype, evaluate it and decide whether to spend more time and resources or just stop it. We canceled so many games.” Yoshida told The Guardian. When a crash occurs, they try to convince the developers that the concept needs to be abandoned so they don’t get stuck on something that has no future.
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“Usually we work with people with very strong ideas. We like such people, so trying to change or stop their ideas is very difficult. In this industry, it’s all about talent. I try to help in any way I can, he added.
Sony must decide which projects are allowed and which are not. This is especially important these days when development costs are rising year on year. Companies have had to deal with extreme growth as they transition from one generation to the next. Compared to the PS3 era, current projects can cost 3x as much.
We learned from Yoshida that development of God of War 3 cost $44 million, but the current God of War Ragnarok for PS5 and PS4, it cost nearly $200 million..
While Sony has never confirmed it, Uncharted and the PS5 sequel Days Gone have been speculated to be cancelled.
Another purchase?
Japanese company will increase acquisition costs by 20% year on year. It is likely that Sony itself will buy another studio or continue to expand existing teams. The company announced this month that it is buying Firewalk along with former Call of Duty and Destiny developers. Here are other purchases:
- Nixxes Software (2021), specialists in porting games to PC.
- Bluepoint Games (2021), writers of the Demon’s Souls remake
- Firesprite (2021), PS VR game developers
- Fabrik Games (2021), Firesprite studio support team
- Housemarque (2021) by Returnal
- Valkyrie Entertainment (2021), a support studio, helped inFamous and God of War.
- Bungie (2022), Studio Destiny
- Haven Studios (2022) under Jade Raymond develops live service games.
- Savage Game Studios (2022), mobile game developers
PC gamers can look forward to more PlayStation games for PC. Sony intends to continue implementing this strategy in the coming months. Maybe the long-awaited samurai event will finally happen Ghost of Tsushima from Sucker Punch, which will complement Horizon Zero Dawn, Marvel’s Spider-Man, The Last of Us Part 1, Days Gone and other Sony games on PC. Let’s hope that this time the port is optimized.
Source :Indian TV
