So wasn't expecting to make this Gaming Hot Take of the day but after reading this from Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki I gotta be honest I had to write something
So look, I can kinda understand this stance in a very retrospective sense as he says "Fostered from the beginning." Playstation 1 in particular didn't really make a big distinction between its original IP and its Third Party IP. It's why you had Crash Bandicoot or Cloud Strife as basically the mascot of Playstation when both come from third parties. Compared to the likes of Mario and Sonic who were not only their console mascot, but company mascots respectively.
But by now, Playstation has an undeniable back catalogue of first and second IP that it can either revive or rerelease if need be. Like if we're looking at like multi entry series and not just one offs, by the PS2, Sony had:
Jak & Daxter
Twisted Metal
Ape Escape
Sly Cooper
MediEvil
Wild Arms
Dark Cloud
Everybody's Golf
God of War
Rachet and Clank
And by the PS3 we have
Infamous
Uncharted
Killzone
Resistance
Little Big Planet
Like Sony has their own catalogue that can stand on its own. Its not like they should be struggling now to play catch up.
Now if you read my recent Emio and Mages post, I am very well aware that in the age of modern gaming, a game doesn't get made without a team devoted to it. And with the rising production and time costs of making games, no company can release a hundred games and be profitable. So sadly some IP just do fall by the wayside in favor of others. Guerrilla Games isn't making Killzone anymore, because their efforts are spent on Horizon and Sucker Punch went from being the Sly Cooper guys to the Infamous guys, to now the Ghosts of Tsushima guys.
However, I feel like Sony has had some circumstances that compound this problem. Sony and Playstation are technically powerful machines-they want to fully utilize the hardware they're selling you for hundreds of dollars. It is their brand. However, the downside to this is because of this the rise in production costs, it's now taking much longer to make games that make use of the powerful hardware. We went from being able to release a full trilogy in a single generation to basically one. Its also made worse by the fact that Sony has been very active in shuttering studios and cutting costs. The biggest would be the loss of Sony Japan Studio, who were beloved for their more varied Japanese-y style games. It added flavor to the more Naughty Dog inspired games of the sixth and seventh generation. But now, Sony went all in on being that one big budget release that leaned more towards broader genres that could maximize the amount of sales like Uncharted, The Last of Us, Spider-Man, etc.
With this, a lot of mismanagement, its really made the PS5 era feel very sparse compared to the PS4. Now, I wanna stress this, I actually do not subscribe to the mentality "Playstation has no games." Playstation has tons of games beyond just their first party titles, some are exclusive like Final Fantasy 16, some are just way too powerful to be something that could be played on a switch like GTAV. Heck, I played Bomb Rush Cyberfunk on my PS5 and it's probably the game I've dumped the most time into this year. So yes, even if Playstation's first party offerings are few and far between, you're still capable of playing a lot of good games on this really expensive plastic box.
And maybe that's indicative of the fact that Playstation has always been about selling you the hardware on the basis of the hardware. Going back to the PS1, the main selling points was this was the haven for third parties after Nintendo really burned a lot of developers with the N64, and that this was a much more system than the N64. When you look at someone like Nintendo now, they're hardware is underpowered they live and die by the power of their software that only they can provide and no one else. But the playstation even if its not shooting out a new Jax & Daxter every year, they're still the place you can play something like Final Fantasy or Elden Ring at a really great clip. Perhaps Totoki was alluding to that reliance on hardware instead of software because in retrospect, they never really had that big homegrown system seller on playstation till the PS2 with things like God of War. And now fostering that, has made it hard to have that sort of Zelda or Halo that are so undeniably their companies IP and will move launch units.
But a reliance on just being the place where you can play games at a high fidelity, means that its still got competition from Xbox and PC. So Sony would have to offer a service the others don't and that can be software you find nowhere else. True story, I was genuinely conflicted about getting a PS5 or and Xbox X/S for my birthday because I knew I needed to at least have a strong machine to play with my switch. And ultimately I took PS5 because that was the console that would have God of War Ragnarok and Spider-Man 2. So yes, IP absolutely factors into purchases in my experience. And the fact that this generation Sony has really struggled to put out first party games, really makes that purchase factor feel so much thinner and thinner. When you know-you know Sony has loads of IP (Some that haven't left their respective console) that even a simple remaster on the PS5 could at least hold people over in-between their AAA releases. So to hear their CFO say that they don't have enough IP, gets very disingenuous.
To close this out, I wanna stress something. I don't think wanting to make new IP is a bad thing. Im glad Sony is willing to invest 8 years and millions of dollars into something new. But eventually, we reach a point where this has to be better managed. We have to have some smaller titles that can be released between the bigger ones. We gotta have some variation in the types of games we're getting from the platform holder. And sometimes leaning in on those fan faves for smaller titles would help. Are they gonna sell 10 million units? More than likely not. But if you balance the budget, having something move between 1-2 million units would be acceptable. Perhaps maybe allow more second party developers a crack at using that IP so your internal teams can work on the bigger blockbuster titles?
The PS5 generation has been a pretty all over the map one for Sony, and the more we learn about the thoughts and management behind the scenes, the more aggravating it can become when this platform does something really cool, but then seems to take two steps back. I genuinely can't tell you if I'll get a PS6. But if I do, it will probably not be out of optimism for classic Playstation franchises to return.
