Sony could narrow the gap between launches of its PlayStation exclusives and PC ports. The company's president, Hiroki Totoki, suggested Wednesday during a question-and-answer session after the results (via VGC) that he wants PlayStation to be “aggressive to improve our margin performance”, with “multi-platform” games playing an important role. He clarified during the presentation that, by multiplatform, he meant on PlayStation and PC – and not on Xbox Or To change.
Asked about the profits of Sony which do not follow the increase in raw income, he replied that the equipment and the owner games were two areas of interest. He noted that the reduction in material costs during this console cycle was “difficult to obtain”, suggesting that we will not see a permanent drop in consoles prices.
“Personally, I think there are opportunities for improving the margin, which is why I would like to be aggressive in improving our performance in terms of margin,” he continued. Totoki has suggested that a way to achieve it is to take advantage of its PlayStation Studios titles (often acclaimed by criticism and commercial success), as Marvel's Spider-Man 2 And God of War: Ragnarok.
“In the past, we wanted to popularize the consoles, and the main objective of a owner title was to make the console popular,” said Totoki during the question and answer session. “It is true, but there is synergy, so if you have strong owner content – not only on our console but also on other platforms, such as computers – a (game) owner can be developed with Several platforms, and this can help improve the operating profit, is therefore another point on which we want to work proactively.
This is a clear change compared to the thoughts of the director of the PlayStation studios, Herman Hulst, in 2022. He then declared that players on PC should wait “at least a year” before seeing PlayStation Owners (less titles live service) on their computers. God of War (2018) and the first Marvel's Spider-Man There was about a four year gap between their PS4 and PC launches. This last Sin-off of Miles Morales experienced a recovery of approximately two years.
On February 8, Sony launched Helldiverse 2 on PS5 and Windows simultaneously. VGC Remarks the game led to the highest number of concurrent Steam players from PlayStation Studios – beating God of the war (2018), The Last of Us Part I And Horizon Zero Dawn. Helldivers 2 was developed by Arrowhead Games with Sony Interactive Entertainment.
It's unclear if Totoki meant we can expect future PlayStation mastheads like the next one wolverine game or the very popular Spider-Man, God of War or various Naughty Dog franchises which will appear on PC the same day as on console. But a change in strategy is underway despite everything, and Totoki will have the leverage necessary to put the plan into action: he takes over for Jim Ryan as interim CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment in April.