PlayStation's New Strategy: It's the Games Stupid!
Sony Santa Monica announced on June 2, 2021 their decision to delay the release of their much-anticipated sequel to God of War another year to 2022. That was pretty unsurprising, as for some reason videogame publishers consistently undershoot their development time and overpromise on release dates. However, Santa Monica also said the following about supporting cross generation or "crossgen":
You can’t build a community of over 110 million PS4 owners and then just walk away from it, right? I think that’d be bad news for fans of PS4, and frankly not very good business. Where it makes sense to develop a title for both PS4 and PS5 — for Horizon Forbidden West, the next God of War, GT7 — we’ll continue looking at that. And if PS4 owners want to play that game, then they can. If they want to go on and play the PS5 version, that game will be there for them. - Cory Barlog, Game Director
Since the release of the PlayStation 5 in November of 2020 we have seen the launch of only a few PS5 exclusive games, and only one big budget/AAA title (Demon's Souls) has not been “crossgen” or having the ability to be played across generations on the PS4 and PS5. Now, it has only been about eight months and the beginning life stages of consoles are always pretty underwhelming even a year in. It isn’t like Xbox has really released any exclusive games at a Demon’s Souls level for the Xbox Series X either. Also, console generations almost always start out with some crossgen. The PS4 and Xbox One each had numerous titles in their first year such as Call of Duty and Assassins Creed that could also be played on PS3 and the Xbox 360.
The rub is that those titles aren’t billed as exclusive to PlayStation. Gamers want a reason to be happy about their purchase and to be excited about the future of their investment. Gamers could have went with an Xbox, but presumably quite a few of them went with PlayStation because of the latter’s much better received catalog of exclusive games over the past several years. Sony’s in-house publishing arm has released many of the most well-received and best selling games over the past decade, and they appear to be maintaining quality with much anticipated sequels coming soon. If gamers understood that Sony was changing strategy, perhaps they would have made a different choice and went with Xbox. And this decision by Sony absolutely is a changing strategy – Sony has always been one to focus on releasing its first party exclusives on their latest console. In regards to crossgen on the PS4, zero first party exclusives released on the PS3.
The difference this time around is not as simple as Sony wanting to reach the PS4 install base with their games for increased gaming revenue, as the same reasoning could be given in support of releasing first party games on PS3 during the PS4 release. In the time since the PS3’s release in 2013, Sony went from an electronics company to a gaming company and PlayStation became their most dominant revenue generator. Gaming and network services (like PlayStation Plus) went from 9.5% of Sony’s revenue when the PS4 was released to 29.5% when the PS5 was released. Sony’s gaming and network segment has taken a larger and larger share of the company’s overall revenue every single year for the past decade.
Sony has to think they did quite a bit of that encumbered compared to their competition. Xbox games are almost entirely sold on PC in addition to Xbox consoles, and recently have opened up their first party games to appearing even on competing consoles. PlayStation games have largely been exclusive to the current flagship platform to drive consumers to buy the new branded console. Sony has been testing the PC market with their older first party games and getting great success – their games really have been incredibly well received and only been able to be played by PlayStation owners.
Of the 38 games that sold over 10 million copies between 2010-2020, the PS4 had four exclusive titles, the Nintendo Switch had four exclusive titles, and the Xbox One had zero exclusive titles. This is a larger shift of Sony opening up their ecosystem and becoming more of a game publisher to capitalize off the success of their developers. Horizon Zero Dawn, a four-year-old game, generated about $30 million in additional revenue for Sony in the first month of its release on PC. That is simply too much revenue to pass up for a game that only needed minor development to be ported to PC.
The consumer demand for the PS5 and the shortage of chips leading to supply declines also gives Sony no incentive to make a decision to limit their sales to a miniscule amount when demand cannot seemingly be driven any further. The PS5 is off to a strong start, and Sony envisions the next two years to be even stronger, with projections for the PS5 in FY22 to lay claim to the record for most sales in a fiscal year for a Sony console (previously held by the PS1 in 1998). Still, games often get hefty discounts after a year on the market, and there are currently only about 8 million PS5s in homes currently, and by the releases of the God of War and Horizon Zero Dawn sequels Sony is expecting a total of 22.8 million PS5s in homes. That is only about 20% of the total sales of the PS4 at 116 million consoles sold. Granted, there is a lot of overlap between the PS5 and PS5 consumer base, but even if we assume 100% of PS5 users were converts from PS4, that still leaves 93.2 million potential more customers for their games by releasing across PS4 and PS5 generations.
If you check the PlayStation subreddit you will find a hoard of individuals upset about the announcement. Gamers usually do feel a bit more entitled than other consumers and it is difficult to tell if many of them have reasonable views on how the game will change if it was limited to development on the PS5. Most games are made for consoles and PCs of very ranged performance specifications. Better performance from your PC gives you noticeable improvements such as lighting, frame rates, textures, and load times – but for the most part it is still the same game with a prettier sheen.
The PS5 version of God of War: Ragnarök will still be delivering a performance you could only get on PS5 with much improved graphics. The real potential gripe that consumers could have with Sony is that developing the game on PS4 directs resources that could be used on the PS5 version. However, even then the PS5 version could have a game improvement that changes the game and is just left out of the PS4 version due to technological constraints. It is a pretty nebulous critique that we would not hold any creative to. We do not know the intention of the God of War: Ragnarok creators, but we should be able to understand that they might prefer to tell a story with the technology they have, and want to try and deliver a (potentially hamstrung) lesser version on PS4 for the widest audience to experience their art.
The game could technically be completely different across systems. The PS4 version could have smaller boss characters, less innovative loading screens, and lack access to complete systems and mechanics and technically still be sold as the same title. In fact, plenty of games use to be sold this way across generations. Now, Sony will most likely not do such a thing, and the truth is the game most likely will be more limited in some ways than if the game was only developed on PS5. The additional money spent on releasing a PS4 port could have went to enhance PS5 textures and assets or development time on new mechanics.
We know Mark Cerny, architect of the PS5, has a dream of the future where the solid state drive in the PS5 dominates gaming. You can see in the Digital Foundry coverage of the new PS5 exclusive game, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, that there are some pretty cool potential ideas that should be explored that can only be possible on PS5. Rift Apart showcases a feature of fast, near instant loading between worlds that the author claims would be impossible on PS4. But, regarding in-development sequels to Horizon Zero Dawn and God of War, the truth is that such a difference will be creatively nebulous and unmeasurable; and regardless, if the game is as exceptional as its predecessor will any one really care enough to not buy the game?
