Trending
Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) chairman Hiroki Totoki has shared some very interesting thoughts on the sustainability and growth of the PlayStation business.
As reported by Bloomberg's Takashi Mochizuki, Totoki implied that development teams under PlayStation Studios may not have a very good understanding of what it takes to grow the business and how much money their games cost.
Totoki's comments seem to suggest that Sony could be looking at ways to reduce the costs of game development, which could potentially lead to layoffs.
Here's what SIE chairman Hiroki Totoki said at Sony's recent earnings call. "It's been four months since I became chairman of SIE. A big problem of SIE that I found is they don't necessarily have a deep understanding of how their work is being translated to growth, generation of sustainable profits and higher margin for the unit as a whole"
Totoki added that PlayStation Studios are a group of very hard-working and talented people who know how to make great games but could improve their understanding of the business side of things.
"I think there is room for improvement. And that's got to do about how to use the money or about the schedule of development or how to fulfill one's accountability towards development," he said.
Leaked internal documents recently revealed that one of the studios that could be affected by layoffs is Marvel's Spider-Man 2 developer Insomniac Games.
Furthermore, the same documents revealed huge game development costs, especially for licenced video games like Wolverine and Spider-Man. While Sony's first-party games usually sell plenty of copies, it's getting increasingly difficult to achieve major profits as the costs of development are getting bigger with each year.
Sony's first-party studios always aim for photorealistic visuals, world-class animations and mocap, which is a very expensive process. We certainly would not be surprised to see Sony dial down on these games and try with more AA or smaller AAA games moving forward.
A safe bet for the future of PlayStation Studios would also be day-and-date releases on PC, since the most recent release Helldivers 2 has seen massive success on Steam, reaching over 200k concurrent players.
Sony's main rival in the console space, Microsoft, are also changing their strategy for Xbox moving forward. We should hear more about that tomorrow, when Microsoft Gaming executives are set to talk about their new plan on Xbox podcast.
DON'T MISS:
- Starfield, Hellblade 2 and more Xbox exclusives are coming to PlayStation 5, it's claimed
- Silent Hill 2 is coming in 2024, PlayStation confirms
- Major PlayStation producer Connie Booth reportedly leaves Sony
- God of War and Horizon Zero Dawn live-action scripts are in development, Sony confirm
- Microsoft Gaming boss Phil Spencer is liking tweets about Xbox handheld
