There’s no doubt that what differentiated the PlayStation from the Xbox was the former’s exclusives.
Sony’s greatest strength has been its consistent ability to produce cinematic single-player story-driven AAA games that often attract some of the best reviews of the year, win awards, and achieve incredibly strong sales.
These include franchises such as ‘God of War’, ‘The Last of Us’, ‘Uncharted’, ‘Horizon’, ‘Marvel’s Spider-Man’, ‘Infamous’ and ‘Ratchet and Clank’ to unique pieces notables like “Ghost of Tsushima”, “Bloodborne”, “Shadow of the Colossus”, “Days Gone”, “Until Dawn”, “Returnal” and “Demon’s Souls”.
The company has been very consistent in providing this to gamers. Now, however, in an effort to expand, it seems their interests have shifted elsewhere depending on their own finances.
Gaming Bible reports that according to financial results recently published on Sony’s own website, they spent 55% of their PS5 capital budget on live games and only 45% on single-player titles in the current fiscal year ( FY2023).
Additionally, it is expected that by fiscal 2025, the difference will reach a split of 60% live service and 40% single player as the company pursues those social gaming dollars. Compare that to fiscal year 2019, when the investment split was just 12% for the live service and 88% for the single-player mode.
The chart also indicates that PlayStation’s expansion in live service gaming investment is to increase their total spend to cover increased live service investment rather than cannibalizing funds from the capital budget of the single player.
Additionally, FY2025 will see 50% of its PlayStation Studios investment in new IPs, a big jump from the 20% spent on new IPs in FY2019. PlayStation Studios head Herman Hulst confirmed last week that PlayStation currently has twelve live service games in production.
Source: The Edge