Sony plans for roughly half of its game releases to be on PC or mobile by 2025, according to a presentation given during the company’s annual investor day. A chart shown during the presentation suggests this would be a major increase from its releases this year, when around a quarter of the company’s releases will be on PC and mobile, with the remainder split between its PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 consoles.
“By expanding to PC and mobile, and it must be said… also to live services, we have the opportunity to move from a situation of being present in a very narrow segment of the overall gaming software market, to being present pretty much everywhere,” said Sony Interactive Entertainment president Jim Ryan in comments reported by Video Games Chronicle.
Ryan went on to say that investing in PC and mobile could lead to “significant growth in the number of people who play our games, the number of people who enjoy our games, and the number of people who spend money on our games.”
Sony’s presentation suggest the company is already reaping the benefits of bringing titles like Horizon Zero Dawn, Days Gone, and God of War to PC, with net sales on the platform more than tripling from $80 million last year to a forecast $300 million in 2022. Sony has been vocal about its plans to bring more titles to PC; launching a PlayStation PC label and even acquiring a PC port developer last year.
On the mobile side, Video Games Chronicle reported last year that Sony had hired the former content boss of Apple Arcade, Nicola Sebastiani, who was the first of several new hires to join PlayStation Studios to focus on mobile. In a slide, the company said it plans to release mobile games via a couple of different avenues, including co-developing titles with existing mobile developers as well as establishing its own network of studios.
As well as PC and mobile, Sony’s presentation offered more details on its live service game ambitions. It plans to have 12 live service franchises operating by 2025, up from one last year, and three this year. This suggests that Sony has two unannounced live service games in development for release in its 2022 fiscal year (MLB The Show 2022 is the third, and Ryan confirmed in a Q&A that Bungie’s Destiny isn’t included in this number). Sony previously said it planned to launch over 10 live service games by March 2026.
Finally, the company says it wants to expand the use of its IP outside of gaming, and used the recent Uncharted film, and the upcoming HBO series based on The Last of Us as key examples.
In a final slide, Sony said it hopes to transform “PlayStation’s current console-centric approach to a future where large elements of our community extend beyond the console.”
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/26/23142569/sony-playstation-pc-mobile-game-releases-first-party-portfolio