Opinion - What's Happening With PlayStation?
Is the PlayStation brand losing trust
The PlayStation has been the status symbol console brand since its meteoric rise in the mid to late nineties. It had a rough moment with the PlayStation 3, but it was able to shake it off and come back even stronger. However, lately, PlayStation has been feeling a little off, and it’s obvious to me that the brand is living mostly off its name and Xbox’s blunders. The messaging is off, the exclusives feel repetitive, and there’s this weird obsession with live service that threatens to change its identity.
I think we can assess that the Jim Ryan era has not been good for PlayStation in the long term. While yes, Jim did have record revenues and profits, the brand identity and health of the studios have taken a big dip. Ryan made a decision to focus on live service and multiplayer games while buckling down on a core set of exclusive single-player franchises such as Horizon (lots of it), God of War, and Spider-Man. During and after his leadership, it’s been filled with studio closures and missing franchises, and the more time passes, the more we’re coming around to the belief that Ryan was a net negative for PlayStation and possibly the worst leader of the platform.
The live service push has been the worst bet that Sony has ever made, even worse than many of the PS3 design and launch decisions. Ryan and company greenlit over ten live service titles, with the idea being that the ones that succeeded would help make up for the failures. Well... it feels like they’ve all been failures, and the more we find out about the plans and cancellations, there are a lot of head-scratchers. I think The Last of Us’ planned multiplayer title could’ve been successful, and I do think that one getting cancelled was a bad idea. However, the others include a God of War live service game; I don’t know why that was even greenlit, and there are many cancellations of unannounced titles. We also have one of the biggest failures in the history of video games - Concord. There is success with Helldivers II, but that feels like the only one.
Then we have Bungie, which has become a poor acquisition for Sony. The Destiny community, from what I’ve heard, is not very happy with the way Destiny 2 has been supported. From what I understand, Marathon is seen as a great extraction shooter, but it’s also apparently been losing players and has its own issues, while Arc Raiders defines itself as the go-to for the genre. That’s before we discuss the internal issues at Bungie and the layoffs that have resulted from them.
Another point of contention with PlayStation has been in the exclusives department. This one is a little more complicated because it’s not like Sony isn’t putting out Game of the Year contenders. The issue is that they’ve gone all in, for better or worse, on the over-the-shoulder third-person cinematic narrative-driven games that helped them make the PS3 comeback with titles like Uncharted and The Last of Us. Now, I love most of these games, but I’ll be the first to admit there is a bit of repetitiveness going on here. I know someone will quickly yell back about Nintendo and their use of a lot of the same IP, and I would argue that doesn’t hold up. My issue isn’t Sony having the same IP; I’m a big fan of IP. I want new stuff too, but I’ll always get excited about iconic franchises. However, Nintendo has a history of changing up what they do with franchises, and the way Super Mario World, Super Mario 64, Super Mario Galaxy, and Super Mario Odyssey play are all different in their core mechanics. They can keep doing God of War, but maybe let’s move on to something new with it.
We do have some light at the end of the tunnel regarding exclusives as reports point to Sony learning their lesson on live service. We have rumors of franchises like Uncharted making a return, and the next God of War does sounds a little different from the Nordic saga. Team Asobi is still doing their thing and I expect another great entry in their Astro Bot series.
I think a lot of this comes down to the state of confusion the industry finds itself in this decade. The post-COVID era feels like a fog, and the industry is just trying to navigate through it and come into 2030 as healthily as possible. Microsoft and Xbox seem confused and are trying to right the ship after a decade of lost identity, and Nintendo has a lot to think through as the economics of manufacturing get worse and they need to build up a user base for their new system. Sony played around with PC ports, and now they’re pulling back. It feels like the big platform holders are just trying to figure out who they are and how to navigate in a world that now includes subscriptions, cloud, tariffs, and AI. PlayStation is trying to figure it out before the PS6 launches.
So, what’s next, and can Sony fix some of these foggy issues? Well, we know Jim Ryan is out, and statements from Sony during financial reports state a focus on the current user base. I have a theory - they waited as long as possible to raise the PS5’s price to get the highest possible user count and then focus on making money from that current base. So, I do expect PlayStation Plus price hikes (even if they are small), and they need to find a way for their gamers to buy more games. They have the advantage of getting a lot of money from live service transactions, and they’ll benefit from the upcoming release of Grand Theft Auto VI. As for exclusives, we have Saros, Wolverine, Intergalactic, and a rumored God of War prequel/spinoff, which should give them a boost as well. However, the long-term issue is going to be the launch of the PS6.
Many expect the next PlayStation to be expensive. I’m in the camp that does expect a pricey launch, but I’m still not seeing a $800-$1000 console because I feel many aren’t taking other factors into account, such as the fact Sony NEEDS people to buy this system to even make any money out of it. Manufacturing costs and production don‘t stay the same every year, and new technologies are not immediately more expensive (this is one people don’t seem to understand). However, I do expect it to be expensive, and I think the transition from PS5 to PS6 owners is going to be slower than the PS4 transition, and that one was pretty slow too. There’s also this rumored handheld, which I do think will be successful, especially in Japan.
So, PlayStation finds itself having to focus on making an ecosystem. It’s not going to be an ecosystem similar to Xbox that includes PC and cloud, but I think it’s more like Apple, which has an ecosystem centered around its personal hardware. The PlayStation brand feels like it’s stumbling through this generation, but hopefully, they calm down and stand a little taller with a new one on the way. It’s going to be a significant issue for Sony to find a way to transition PS5 owners to PS6, and that’s before we talk about the weak graphical jumps in between. Hopefully, Sony and PlayStation figure it out.