Sony to launch 10 first-party live service games on PS5
As fans continued to be puzzled over why Sony bought Bungie, Sony has dropped some hints about the importance of live service games to their future.
Usually, a video game company acquires another is so they can make their games exclusive, such as the one Microsoft did on Bethesda. However, it is not the case with Microsoft and Activision Blizzard or in this matter, Sony and Bungie.
In a unique massive deal worth $3.6 billion, Bungie, a game studio best known for creating the Halo and Destiny universes, will maintain its creative independence and self-publish its future games. It also means that Bungie’s future games will remain multiplatform as well.
This is the part that has left many dumbfounded as they try to figure out the reason behind the acquisition.
Sony has also been insisting that no Bungie game is going to be a Sony exclusive anywhere in near future. However, according to its recent financial report, Sony expects to launch 10 new live service games by March 2026 – proving its intention to actually utilize Bungie to develop its games as a service division.
Bungie won’t be alone
Sony has been known for its high-quality first-party exclusives, which were the primary cause of the PlayStation 4 success. But they were mainly single-player, narrative-based games. The company plans to expand its territories and thus, the games as service plan was created.
With only a little over four years of a timeframe to make 10 games, Bungie probably wouldn’t be developing them all alone. They might be helping out other studios with their expertise with Destiny instead.
Bungie itself is known to have at least two new games currently in development. The circulating hints also revealed that one is a comedy dungeon crawler while another is some kind of competitive multiplayer game, with Sony’s chief financial officer Hiroki Totoki saying that at least one is going to be the company’s “major new IP”.
Rumor has it that both might be live service titles. However, no official announcement has been made yet, so it’s impossible to say for sure.
It is believed that Naughty Dog, Guerilla, and Firesprite are also working on multiplayer projects. Sony is also collaborating with the former developer of Treyarch to build a potential new IP, rumored to be a multiplayer shooter game. On the other hand, PlayStation also officiated its team-up with Firewalk productions to churn out more multiplayer IPs.
Supply crisis hits PS5 sales
Despite high demand, PS5 couldn’t top PS4’s 20.2 million units record as it was sold 17.3 million units by the end of 2021. The company previously announced the ongoing major chip shortage crisis has taken a toll on its manufacturing capacity. During the last 3 months, it manage to ship only 3.9 million, which is down from 4.5 million at the same timeframe in 2020.
Despite the fact that Sony is still forced to lower its sales predictions for the next financial year, the last quarter was still a record year for PlayStation. The division earned its highest operating profit ever, which was the second-highest quarterly revenue in Sony’s entire history.
