(Credit: Resistance 3, Insomniac Games)

For the big three console manufacturing companies, Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony respectively have their depth of franchises and series to market. For the better part of the last decade, Sony and the PlayStation have dominated the market. In recent years, notably throughout 2023, the PlayStation brand is seeing some heavy restructuring following the Jim Ryan tenure, as development costs and lower-than-projected PS5 sales see the brand losing money.

This story comes courtesy of PlayStation Lifestyle, in an interview with the Financial Times, Sony Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki spoke about how the PlayStation brand needs to place importance on creating new intellectual properties. The mission statement appears to be to invest "multi-billion dollars" to foster new series.     

“Whether it’s for games, films or anime, we don’t have that much IP that we fostered from the beginning,” Totoki states. “We’re lacking the early phase (of IP) and that’s an issue for us.”

Totoki would later state that Sony has been "better at finding new audiences for existing popular IPs, and thinks that the company won’t grow without creating content from scratch for higher returns."

The statement may seem bizarre, but Totoki has a valid viewpoint; there is a severe disconnect between management and their audience. Naturally, Sony does have incredibly popular game series that have catapulted them to the front of the video game industry. Names like Uncharted, the rebirth of God of War, and The Last of Us have been the cornerstone of the PlayStation brand. However, their issue currently has been tied to the fact that it's very top-heavy.

PlayStation's operating costs and high game budgets keep these pieces of software from being annual releases. Sure, there are some dormant properties like Killzone, Resistance, SOCOM, and inFAMOUS, titles that likely don't resonate with modern audiences beyond nostalgic appeal, with little to no plan on reintroducing the software for newer fans. The complete collapse of Concord and Sony's efforts to cynically capitalize on live service models, already a crowded market, shows this isn't what fans want and Sony themselves aren't sincere about understanding the shifts in the industry; creativity is beginning to pay off rather than trends.

SOURCE: PlayStation Lifestyle