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While the PS5 and all PlayStations before it have some truly incredible first-party titles, they’ve never been Sony’s strength like Nintendo.
The Switch 2 is sold on the strength of Mario and Pokémon; PS5 is all about GTA and Call of Duty.
It’s something the company has openly acknowledged in an interview with The Game Business, although as the boss of Second and Third-Party at PlayStation, executive Christian Svensson is very much focused on a specific pillar of the ecosystem.
Describing PlayStation as “very third-party focused”, he explained:
“If you talk to [PlayStation CEO] Nishino-san, who has a very product-led background, he’ll say, ‘PlayStation is just a plastic box without content.’ And third-parties are the lion’s share of the content. So, it’s critical that we continue to lean in and drive, and be ambitious and bring new voices to the platform. If we ever stop doing that, the industry will stop growing. We have, as an industry leader, a responsibility to continue to drive and push and to grow the whole industry, not just our own business.”
Svensson continued that first-party is about setting the “bar” for its platform, and it regularly demonstrates content to its partners to show them what a “best-in-class” experience should look like on its hardware.
On the topic of first-party influencing third-party he added:
“We do have some beta, first-party functionality that is being built on behalf of the first-party side and is really going to trickle out and become increasingly available to our third-parties on a selective basis. But more often than not it goes the other way: we’re building things for third-party which first-party will be able to take advantage of. And there’s a couple of programmes our teams have been working on for a while that I can’t talk about yet that will be best-in-class examples. We’ll talk about that next year.”
So interesting stuff, then – and even an enticing tease.
We wonder what those programmes entail? It’s probably not anything for us to get excited on the consumer end, but a strong development environment is always advantageous for the brand as a whole.
On the subject of PlayStation being more third-party focused, we don’t think that’s ever been in doubt.
While franchises like God of War and The Last of Us have grown immeasurably over the past decade or so, Sony still sells its hardware on the strength of franchises like EA Sports FC and Resident Evil. Third-party has and always will be king for PlayStation.
The big question is how will it maintain its advantage.
The rise of PC and even the more capable hardware of the Switch 2 means there are alternative options for consumers, and it’s going to need to fight tooth-and-nail to ensure PS5 (and later PS6) remain the place to play third-party games.
Word is the company has signed a marketing deal with GTA 6 which is certainly going to help this holiday, but it’s clear Sony cannot rest on its laurels.