Sony is continuing to make big moves in the gaming industry as it looks to expand its presence on the PC platform. In a recent announcement, Hiroki Totoki, the company’s chairman, expressed Sony’s commitment to investing in the PC gaming market.
Sony’s Focus on Multi-Platform Games
While Sony revealed that there will be no new games from major existing IPs this year, the company also emphasized its increased investment in multi-platform first-party games. Totoki explained, “In the past, we wanted to popularize consoles, and a first-party title’s main purpose was to make the console popular. This is true, but there’s a synergy to it, so if you have strong first-party content – not only on our console but also other platforms, like computers – a first-party [game] can be grown with multi-platform, and that can help operating profit to improve, so that’s another one we want to proactively work on.”
This move isn’t entirely new, as Sony has already released PC ports of popular franchises like God Of War, The Last of Us, and Horizon. Last week, the company launched Helldivers 2 for PlayStation 5 and PC, which was a major success on both platforms.
Totoki views cross-platform gaming as a strategic way to increase Sony’s gaming division’s net profits. Despite increased income from PlayStation, the bottom line has not seen the same level of growth. This is mainly due to rising console manufacturing costs, which Sony is working on reducing. In the meantime, expanding their first-party games to the PC platform is expected to positively impact the company’s financial performance.