If you were wondering what Sony’s up to after its latest State of Play presentation didn’t have much in the way of first-party games, it sounds like there was a reason for that. It looks like PlayStation 5’s 2024 will have a dearth of first-party games over the next year, as the company has confirmed it won’t be releasing “any new major existing franchise titles” until 2025.
The statement comes from the company’s Q3 2023 earnings report (thanks, Gematsu), in which Sony Group Corporation President Hiroki Totoki said that the company won’t be releasing games on the scale of God of War Ragnarök during the next fiscal year. This refers to the period between April 1, 2024 and March 31, 2025.
“Regarding first-party software, we aim to continue to focus on producing high-quality works and developing live service games,” Totoki said. “But while major projects are currently under development, we do not plan to release any new major existing franchise titles next fiscal year like God of War Ragnarok and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.”
This gets into some weird semantics because what is a “major existing franchise,” exactly? Sony is publishing a handful of games in 2024, including Stellar Blade and the Until Dawn remake, but those are probably not considered marquee titles by the powers that be, and aren’t coming from first-party studios. So it’s not like the PlayStation 5 has nothing to look forward to in 2024, but it will probably be a more lowkey year for the system all around.
This follows a dip in expected hardware sales for the PlayStation 5 (thanks, Reuters), causing Sony to cut its year-end sales forecast for the fiscal year from 25 million to 21 million. Sony expects a “gradual decline” in console sales from the next fiscal year and given that the next year seems a bit sparse, it would be surprising if there were a bump between now and the next big game. Totoki continued:
“Regarding the PlayStation 5 hardware, which will enter its fifth year since launch, partially due to its entering the latter half of the console cycle, we aim to optimize sales with a greater emphasis on balance with profits, so we anticipate a gradual decline in unit sales from next fiscal year onwards. We expect third-party software sales to continue to expand gradually due to the expansion of the PlayStation 5 install base and the high level of user engagement. In network services, we expect subscribers to be on par with this fiscal year or slightly less due to the impact of price revision we implemented in this fiscal year, but we expect sales to gradually expand due to a shift to attractive premium services.”
While Sony’s projections are lower than the company expected, the PlayStation 5 is, by and large, still doing well. The system has shipped over 54.8 million units since its launch in 2020, and recently set a new record for PlayStation console sales in Japan.
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