PS5 boss wants future games to be as popular as music

Yesterday PlayStation boss Jim Ryan said he wants his company’s games to someday be as prolific as music or movies. He would like to see a world where potentially “hundreds of millions of people” could benefit. It’s the kind of future that many gaming executives are talking about, but one that Sony seems to have no interest in realizing.

Ryan’s remarks came during a 20-minute interview with JeuxIndustrie.biz to GI Live: London where, although it was billed as a fireside speech, it didn’t really say much noteworthy. According to him, what defines PlayStation? Games, community and “brand”. What makes the PS5 so “cool? The games of course. Which one is her favorite? Ratchet and Clank: Rift AparOf course, the centerpiece of PS5 tech you can buy this holiday season for $ 70.

Instead of commenting on or being asked about industry issues regarding game tightening, accessibility or preservation, the most interesting thing to come out of the mouth of the CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment was his wish to ” seeing a world where the games we make on PlayStation can be enjoyed by tens of millions of people, maybe hundreds of millions of people.

He continued:

Right now, the success with the current console model, a really big hit PlayStation, you’re talking about ten or 20 million people who can play this game. We’re talking about games stacking against music, we’re talking about games. stacking up against films. Music and movies, they can be enjoyed by almost unlimited audiences.

And I think some of the art that our studios do is some of the best entertainment that has been done anywhere in the world. And sort of attracting audiences for the wonderful art, the wonderful entertainment that our studios do … I would love to see a world where hundreds of millions of people can enjoy these games.

It’s an admirable feeling, especially, as Ryan points out, because of the implications it would have for developers and gamers, with their hobby opening up to a much wider audience. “It’s potentially really amazing and really powerful,” Ryan said. But it also seems strangely at odds with Sony’s current strategy around the PS5.

The company hasn’t made video game streaming a centerpiece or bet big on PS Now like Microsoft did with Game Pass. There aren’t a lot of little games or mobile games coming out. And the company has only just started bringing some of its biggest blockbusters to PC, years after their initial release. It’s not Sony’s fault that a pandemic resulted in manufacturing shortages and disrupted global supply chains, but even though you could find a PS5 in stores, it represents the high end of console gaming by compared to the Xbox Series S, Nintendo Switch, and Switch Lite.

If anything, Sony appears to be doubling down on the prestige blockbuster model, investing heavily in a small roster of big releases. PS4 finished the last generation with Marvel’s Spider-Man, Ghost of Tsushima, and The Last of Us Part II, each of which has enjoyed strong sales and general rave reviews. God of the war won Game of the Year at the 2018 Game Awards. Herman Hulst, former director of Guerilla Games, maker of Horizon Zero Dawn, was promoted to head of Sony Worldwide Studios. And now, 2022 is expected to bring sequels to many of these games, with more coming soon after. It might go on to make the PS5 the “coolest” console around, but it doesn’t seem like a recipe for reaching someone who isn’t already on board.

“Sony’s focus on exclusive blockbusters has come at the expense of niche teams and studios within the PlayStation organization, resulting in high revenue and less choice for gamers.” reported Bloomberg in April. Instead of investing in smaller teams to pursue more experimental projects, Sony has reportedly dubbed the remakes and sequels of its most successful series. Japan Studio, responsible for a series of small, intriguing projects during the PS3 and Vita days, has been downsized and overhauled earlier this year. And some independent developers complained over the summer that Sony can be difficult to work with compared to Microsoft and Nintendo.

Ryan explained the ideology at the heart of modern PlayStation in an interview with TMTPost Around the same time. “Players only remember the best games rather than the OK games,” he said. “If it’s a better game, players might want a sequel, and they’ll want to buy a sequel as well, but nobody really cares about a game that’s only okay.”

This line of thinking has its critiques, however, including previous iterations of PlayStation.

“Right now we’re limiting ourselves to genres, sequels, and certain types of games,” said Shawn Layden, former CEO of SIE Worldwide Studios, said GamesIndustry.biz in July. “Favorites like mine, like Parappa and Vib-Ribbon, these things don’t seem to have a chance to come out on stage. It’s bad for the industry and for the fans. Over time, this leads to a collapse of the video game industry if we keep talking to the same people and telling the same stories the same way.

Layden, who abruptly resigned from Sony in 2019 a few months after Ryan took office, recently criticized soaring development budgets, calling on companies to Instead, switch to shorter, cheaper games. This sentiment has also become a rallying cry for other players in the industry. “I want shorter games with poorer graphics created by people who are paid more to work less and I’m not kidding,” FanByte Jordan Mallory of the media tweeted in June 2020. In August of this year, independent developers answered the call with the “Shorter games, worse graphics“package.

Video games, and the people who make and play them, have always had an idea of ​​their status in the culture at large. Today, games are a $ 180 billion global industry, no one but internet freaks asks if they’re still art, and Hollywood is desperately grabbing every IP address in the world. games he can. But it’s still not as ubiquitous as music or TV, especially outside of mobile and PC. The PS4 has overtaken the PS3 by around 30 million units. The PS5 could even sell 30 million more. But that would still put it behind the best-selling console of all time: the PS2. A console for which, it could be noted, there was the most amazing range of games of all lengths and all budgets.

“In order for us to increase the audience for games, we have to get to where they are,” Layden told GamesIndustry.biz this summer. “We’ve been here for 25 years, they know where we are and they haven’t come yet. And there is a reason. We must discover and question this reason.

I’m sure there are several reasons, but I doubt another Horizon Zero Dawn Where God of the war will be the answer.