If you were hoping for PlayStation to have a major AAA from an existing franchise released in the next year, you might want to set those expectations aside, as Sony has confirmed they have no plans for one until after 2025.
Sony just held their quarterly financial conference call, where CFO and COO Hiroki Totoki talked about the company’s performance in the last quarter, as well as setting some new goals and expectations for the upcoming fiscal year (April 2024 – March 2025). One of these goals that Totoki commented on was a shift and more significant focus on the balance between profitability and sales in the upcoming years, noting that the PS5 has entered its “latter stage of its life cycle.”
Before, Sony had set expectations for 25 million PS5 consoles to be sold during this fiscal year but has now lowered expectations to 21 million. This is also in part due to the company being aware of its content pipeline, confirming to investors and analysts that they have no plans to release any established franchise sequel in the next year.
“Regarding first-party software, we aim to continue to focus on producing high-quality works and developing live service games.
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.”
Whether this includes Death Stranding 2 is yet to be confirmed, as while being a PlayStation exclusive with an in-house engine from the publisher, Dead Stranding 2 is developed by a third-party studio, Kojima Productions. Either way, this means we shouldn’t expect a follow-up to Ghost of Tsushima and other major sequels and spinoffs from PlayStation to be released next year.
That does not mean we won’t see any new first-party releases from PlayStation within the next year, as there are several new IPs that the PlayStation had previously announced, as well as some new ones yet to be released that could fill the gap.
The cost of development for first-party games, and games in general, has sharply risen over the last decade, so this news shouldn’t come as much as a surprise. Though it does come at a point where many still feel the PS5 has only begun showing its potential, despite being over four years old.
Speaking of Death Stranding 2. go check out our first look of gameplay of it right here.