It is indisputable that Winds of change are blowing at Sony and, very especially, around PlayStation and its complete and complex ecosystem. The first example of this is found, of course, in the 180-degree turn in relation to competing with Xbox Game Pass. And it is that if about a year and a half ago the company ruled out the possibility of offering a similar service, shortly after they began to work on it and, finally, a couple of months ago they announced the new PlayStation Plus, which is precisely that. , Sony’s Xbox Game Pass.
Another change in approach is found in regard to the relationship of its exclusive titles with the PC world. And it is that while Microsoft understands exclusivity as Xbox + PC, Sony for years has been much more reluctant to this model. And beware, that is perfectly understandable, since Microsoft also lives from the PC ecosystem, with which Sony today has no relationship. Thus, jumps from PlayStation to PC have not been something common for a long time and, probably, some titles such as the Gran Turismo saga will remain that way.
However, yesterday we learned that Returnal, one of Sony’s console exclusives, could soon make the leap to PC through Steam, which indicates that the company would be somewhat more open to the PlayStation + PC duality, something that seems to me to be a great success, because in this way it can expand the scope of its titles (and therefore its profitability ) to a multi-billion dollar ecosystem.
And today we can read, on TweakDown, that at the 2022 business strategy meeting Sony has announced that its goal, for 2025, is that one in five of its own titles, that is, those developed by its studios, are aimed at the smartphone market. A market that, as you know, has been experiencing constant growth for years and whose short and medium-term prospects remain particularly positive.
Obviously, it is still early to know what proposals Sony plans to bring to users’ smartphones, although it makes sense to think that at least a part of them will be related to exclusive PlayStation franchises. The key, however, is that the game style on console and smartphone are very different, so Sony studios will have to fine-tune the shot quite a bit to, outside their area of ​​​​experience, be able to provide adequate proposals for said environment.
The picture of the policy change is even more evident if we compare, as Sony did in one of its presentation slides, the volume of games per platform. This is the graph:
As you can see, Sony says that in 2019 95% of its games were directed at PlayStation 4, with a marginal 5% for PC. The prediction for this 2022 already shows a certain difference, with around 75% directed to its consoles, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, which is complemented by 20% for PC and 5% for mobile, and with the purpose that in 2025 the titles directed to PlayStation 5 suppose around 55%, with 25% directed to PC and 20% to smartphone.
Sony demonstrates, with these plans, have learned the very valuable lesson of the importance of diversifying. If they finally stick with it, I think the bad omens from some analysts will be left in the lurch, and this seems to me to be exceptionally positive news.
