PlayStation bets big on new franchises and live service games

By now, Sony is perhaps widely renowned for its ambitious single-player PlayStation games from franchises you know and love – series like God of the war, HorizonAnd Spider Man come to mind. But just a few years from now, you might be playing plenty of new PlayStation franchises instead – and plenty of live-service titles.

As part of a business presentation on Tuesday, Sony shared some updates on how it plans to invest in its portfolio. In fiscal year 2025, for example, it estimates that 50% of its investment in PlayStation studios will be in new IPs, which is a major leap from years past: according to one slide, in its fiscal year 2019 , only 20% of its investments were in new franchises. And if you look at the slide, that 50% of the investment in FY23 looks as big – if not more – than all of its spending in FY19.

The changes could be even more notable for how Sony invests in what it calls “traditional” games and live services. In FY19 the split was 88% traditional games to 12% live service games, but for FY25 Sony expects this ratio to increase to 40/60. (During the presentation, PlayStation Studios head Hermen Hulst said Sony currently has 12 games in production – a number Sony has shared in the past.)

If you’ve been following PlayStation’s movements over the past few years, these changes shouldn’t be too surprising. Sony has made major acquisitions in studios working on major live-service titles, including Bungie, Jade Raymond’s Haven Studios and Firewalk Studios, and Horizon franchise developer Guerrilla Games has already said it’s working on a multiplayer Horizon game. Sony has clearly seen how studios like Epic Games (in which it has invested hundreds of millions) and Bungie (which he now owns) can encourage players to invest a lot of time and money in Fortnite And Destiny 2-level hits, and it looks like Sony sees a significant opportunity in creating its own live service games.

It seems likely that we’ll get a glimpse of some of these new franchises or live service games during Sony’s PlayStation Showcase on Wednesday, especially since the company has already promised that the event will feature “a sneak peek at several new creations of PlayStation Studios”.