According to a presentation by Sony for its annual investor day, the company plans to focus more on live games and release more games on PC and mobile by 2025.
In January, Sony announced its acquisition of Bungie and it plans to increase its live games services through the developer. By the end of Fiscal Year 2022, Sony estimates its investment in live service will reach 49%. The company is looking far beyond and expects live service to reach 55% by Fiscal Year 2025 while it hoped to have ramped up its traditional business to 49% by the same period.
Currently, Sony’s PlayStation has only MLB The Show as its live game but the company is hoping to increase its portfolio to 12 games by 2025. The expansion in live service games will go through Sony’s first-party portfolio now that it has acquired Bungie.
Another area Sony is targeting is PC, the company hopes to expand its audience by bringing more first-party titles to the platform. The company is already reaping its rewards in that market with the combined release of Horizon Zero Dawn, Days Gone, and God of War brought in a revenue of $108.9 million as of March, 2022. Of the three titles released on PC, Horizon Zero Dawn has sold 2.3 million units to date, Days Gone 852,000, while Santa Monica’s God of War has shipped 971,000 units on PC.
Sony is forecasting a $300 million revenue for PC sales in FY2022. PC sales accounted for $80 million of PlayStation’s net profit in FY2021. “By expanding to PC and mobile, and it must be said… also to live services, we have the opportunity to move from a situation of being present in a very narrow segment of the overall gaming software market, to being present pretty much everywhere,” Sony boss, Jim Ryan explained.
Concerning the push into mobile, it was reported last year by Video Games Chronicle that Nicola Sebastiani, formerly of Apple Arcade had joined Sony to bolster its mobile games department. From Sony’s presentation, the company said it will “leverage partnerships to build leading mobile development and publishing capabilities within SIE.” The company also said it is open to working with mobile developers to co-develop titles, as well as “publish external games that fit within the broader PlayStation Studios portfolio.“
Lastly, Sony intends to bring new IP to its PlayStation Studios lineup. The company is hoping its revamped PlayStation Plus service will also attract new 50 million subscribers when FY2022 ends.
Image: Jim Ryan/CES 2020
