Remember when PlayStation announced that Horizon Forbidden West will be coming to PC soon? It was notable because the window between the game first launching and its PC port was smaller than usual. And it may not be a coincidence either, as the gaming arm of Sony has plans to make more aggressive moves to have its first-party games be made on “other platforms, like computers”.
In an earnings call, Sony president and PlayStation chairman Hiroki Totoki was asked to address the gaming division’s growing gross income, but not profit. The provided answer was two fold, and one of it relates to its first party games.
Totoki says that, PlayStation first-party titles’ primary purpose was to drive console sales, but such titles “can be grown with multi-platform, and that can help operating profit to improve”. Despite mentioning multi-platform though, only PC was mentioned explicitly, which may or may not be an indication on the company’s intended expansion trajectory.
Also worth mentioning though that not all games are that lucky. While titles by Santa Monica Studio, Guerrilla Games and Insomniac Games have gotten PC ports, none made by Sucker Punch has had that privilege just yet. Which makes for a bleak outlook for those looking for a Ghost of Tsushima PC port.
The other approach to increasing profits was hardware prices, but Totoki says that “cost reduction in this console cycle is really difficult to come by”. This was attributed to increasing prices of the PS5 console’s components. But this also means that customers probably shouldn’t be expecting price cuts, especially outside of temporary discounts.
During the same earnings call, Totoki says that PlayStation expects “a gradual decline in unit sales from the next fiscal year onwards”. This was attributed to the fact that there will be no big name exclusives upcoming, as well as the PS5 itself being in the second half of the console generation cycle.
Of course, this may have something to do with PlayStation deciding to stagger the availability of the redesigned PS5. Despite having launched it in November last year, it was not available in all markets around the world. In fact, we are only getting it later this month. While these are small improvements, the reduced bulk and larger built-in storage can be strong incentives for those who decided not to get the launch model console.
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