Those who follow the news of the video game industry will have noticed that, in recent years, PlayStation has released few exclusives. A lot of remasters, some remakes, a few sequels… but still, there are few titles.
And now we find out that the bad news is going to continue, at least for the rest of 2024 and part of 2025. It hurts, but we have to start getting used to it.
According to the company’s statement during its third quarter fiscal year 2023 earnings presentation, Sony has no plans to release “any major new titles from existing franchises in the next fiscal year,” which ends on March 31, 2025.
No major exclusives until April 2025
“Regarding first-party software, our goal is to continue focusing on the production of high-quality works and the development of live service games,” said Sony Group’s President, Chief Operating Officer, and Chief Financial Officer, Hiroki Totoki.
“But although there are currently big projects in development, we do not plan to release any new major titles from existing franchises in the next fiscal year (which begins on April 1, 2024, and ends on March 31, 2025) such as God of War Ragnarok and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2,” the director concluded.
It should be noted that while the “main titles of existing franchises” include intellectual property such as God of War and Marvel’s Spider-Man, it does not include new intellectual property such as Concord or non-important existing franchise titles like Until Dawn.
And what about PS5 sales in 2024
Totoki also referred to the company’s future prospects for PlayStation 5 hardware sales during the next fiscal year.
“Regarding the hardware of PlayStation 5, which will enter its fifth year since its launch, partly due to entering the last half of the console cycle, our goal is to optimize sales with a greater emphasis on balance with benefits, so we anticipate a gradual decline in unit sales starting from the next fiscal year,” Totoki explained at the results meeting.
“We expect third-party software sales to continue gradually expanding due to the expansion of the PlayStation 5 install base and the high level of user engagement. In network services, we expect subscribers to be on par with or slightly below this fiscal year due to the impact of the price revision we implemented in this fiscal year, but we expect sales to gradually expand due to a shift towards attractive premium services.”
Yes, PlayStation believes that the changes in PS Plus (along with its corresponding price increase) will convince hesitant buyers to bet on a PS5. It seems strange to us, but… who knows.
