Sony Interactive Entertainment’s new co-CEOs haven’t even had a single day in their roles, and already they’re driving the PlayStation brand into the ground.
We’ve already seen how Sony consistently misses sales targets for the PlayStation 5 console, a system losing popularity among consumers due to its high price and lackluster exclusives, despite hardware revisions cutting production costs. Ironically, the price of PlayStation has only increased since the PS5’s launch.
Sony has gradually started releasing its “exclusives” on PC, with the recent hit Helldivers 2 emerging unexpectedly. However, the company faced IMMENSE backlash when it required PC players of Helldivers 2 to create and link a PlayStation Network (PSN) account.
It appears the reason behind this move, and the requirement for PC players of games like Ghost of Tsushima to create a PSN account, is that Sony’s new CEOs want to push PC users towards buying a PlayStation. They are willing to delay PC releases to achieve this goal.
Herman Hulst, soon to be appointed co-CEO and co-founder of Guerilla Games (developers of the Horizon franchise), claimed in an interview during Sony’s Business Segment Meeting 2024 that live-service titles will launch simultaneously on PlayStation and PC.
However, Sony’s first-party single-player titles will be console “exclusives” for an extended period, aiming to encourage PC players to purchase a PlayStation 5, a $500 console that also requires a monthly subscription to access online features.
Sony aims to entice PC players to purchase and play sequels to single-player narrative games on a PlayStation console. Single-player titles that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to develop mind you, these games at a minimum require millions of sales.
Sony has easily achieved this with titles such as Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part 2, Guerilla’s Horizon Forbidden West, and Insomniac Games’ Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. However, Sony tends to artificially inflate these sales figures by aggressively pushing console bundles that include these games.
Sony seems willing to do whatever it takes to get both the console and the game to sell. According to leaks from Insomniac Games, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 reportedly cost over $300 million to develop, while the Miles Morales expansion cost around $156 million.
Leaked slides from Insomniac suggest that the next installment, Spider-Man 3, will be divided into three separate releases.
The first part, allegedly set for the holiday season in 2027, is expected to have a development cost of $175 million and will be sold for $50. The second part, with a $225 million budget, is slated for release a year later, alongside a separate multiplayer installment with an $80 million budget.
The Last of Us Part 2 was inadvertently revealed to have cost about $220 million, and Horizon Forbidden West cost $212 million during its development. These figures exclude the substantial marketing costs.
Investing hundreds of millions into these single-player cinematic experiences, even if they sell millions of copies, isn’t financially sustainable due to the high production costs. Sony needs to sell millions of units just to break even, which is why they frequently bundle these exclusives with their consoles. This strategy not only inflates sales figures but also boosts long-term profits.
Sony has been rather eager over the past several years in releasing their modern catalogue of “exclusive” first-party titles onto the PC, which then go on to sell a handful of millions over time, the PC platform is essentially a must for Sony’s cinematic releases as it almost certainly ensures that they remain profitable to produce despite the astronomical costs, hence why Sony have been sacking employees across its PlayStation brand.
During the PlayStation business segment meeting, Hulst revealed that the current console generation (PS5) is the most profitable to date. Although the monthly active user split between the PS4 and PS5 is identical, total gameplay hours on the PS5 are significantly higher.
Corporate profitability is totally beneficial for consumers, or so they want us to believe. Despite the PlayStation 5 underperforming compared to sales targets and maintaining a 50/50 split between PS4 and PS5 users, it still manages to fuel profits.
This is likely because Sony has been meticulously revising the PS5’s hardware to reduce production costs without passing any savings onto consumers, resulting in poor sales figures. Meanwhile, PlayStation Plus subscription fees have only surged in price recently.
While the PS5 might be struggling in terms of sales, Sony is making enough money through cheaper console production and increased service prices to maintain profitability.
To further illustrate the situation, Sony announced during this business presentation that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 has sold over 11 million copies since its release on October 20, 2023, likely boosted by console bundles. Despite the game’s divisive narrative and DEI themes, it has undoubtedly broken even for the company.
However, one might question whether making a few tens of millions of dollars on a game that cost over $300 million to produce is truly worthwhile. I’m not so sure, Nintendo certainly doesn’t seem to think so and their handheld system is absolutely dominating the market rendering both Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s XBOX obsolete with an actual library of exclusives you’d want to play.
By comparison, their live-service game Helldivers 2 was an unexpected success. It released on February 8th 2024 and has sold over 12 million copies, more than Spider-Man 2 in quite literally half the time.
The unexpected success of Helldivers 2 is quite possibly why Sony wishes to go in this direction of stifling the sales of their single player library on PC.
I highly doubt that their upcoming live-service releases of “Concord” or “Marathon” will entice and excite PC players as effectively as Helldivers 2 did.
With Concord being a mundane 5v5 first person hero shooter slated for release on August 23rd, it offers little innovation within the genre and is likely to fade into obscurity, much like Square Enix’s Foamstars. The game features numerous heroes to choose from, none of whom are White men.
I’m sure there’s no agenda behind its development, though. To drive the point home, it’s promised that every week, players of Concord will be treated to cinematic vignettes exploring the lives, backgrounds, and relationships of the characters, similar to Activision Blizzard’s Overwatch. Expect significant LGBTQ+ representation among the cast of Concord, with these vignettes delving into their romances.
Meanwhile, Marathon, an extraction shooter developed by Bungie, is slated for release sometime in 2025. So far, nothing has been shown beyond a cinematic reveal trailer featuring a rather unappealing female crash test dummy. Considering how Bungie has driven the Destiny franchise into the ground, I wouldn’t expect a narrative masterpiece from this game either.
Helldivers 2 succeeded by offering a genuinely enjoyable experience without absurd microtransactions and maintaining a politically neutral stance, free from progressive agendas. In contrast, Sony’s upcoming live-service games, even with simultaneous PC releases, are unlikely to receive the same level of praise and profitability that Helldivers 2 managed to achieve.
Sony’s single-player games may continue to sell, but with each subsequent sequel in franchises like Spider-Man, The Last of Us, and God of War, players are noticing a significant drop in innovation. The general controls and playability remain largely the same, while narrative storytelling has considerably declined, especially with companies like Sweet Baby Inc being involved in games such as God of War: Ragnarok and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.
I doubt Sony can maintain this pace with future installments, especially if they continue to cost hundreds of millions to develop as Marvel’s Spider-Man 3 would suggest, PC players are unlikely to spend $500 on a console nearing the end of its lifecycle just to play a sequel to a game they liked.
Sony can’t afford to stifle its big-budget cinematic releases; even one sales dip could result in monumental losses in an overinflated and underwhelming industry.
Sony still imposes censorship on Asian developers while promoting mature games filled with gore and nudity, as long as they are developed by Western studios or feature queer romance for years now, we’ve already seen them stifle their own third-party “exclusive” by imposing a day one censorship patch upon Stellar Blade.
Gaming as a whole seems to be trending downwards, with entire studios going under mere months after their releases. The future doesn’t look particularly bright for Sony’s underwhelming console and the few “exclusive” games that release on it once a year. PC players have proven to be quite resilient and patient, which is why the Epic Games Store continues to lose money despite Epic Games offering exclusivity contracts like candy to developers.
If PC players are willing to wait for Epic Games Store “exclusives” to come to Steam, what hope does Sony have of getting them to buy into a dead-end ecosystem that forces them to pay for monthly internet access and charges top dollar for games? This is especially questionable after hundreds of thousands of people review-bombed Helldivers 2 because Sony mandated the creation of a PSN account to continue playing. The game remains largely unavailable despite Sony reversing their decision.
