The only thing that concerns me about Sony is their emphasis on Naughty Dog.
ND maybe are their best selling, most awarded devs. So obviusly they get more attention. Same happens in Nintendo with the 98449556 Mario games they release, or with Halo on MS.
But ND aren't even a 10% of the games published by Sony. And if we include the 3rd party exclusive deals they make it's even less. And if we count their investments in other stuff like hardware and accesories, OS features, services and subscription ND is a very tiny part of their emphasis.
Just because Sony studios have grown doesn't mean that they are going to all of a sudden have a lot more games from each studio. All this means is that they can probably either make a much larger and better looking world or they can at least create one extra game with the larger studios.
edit: this is also why I said they need to buy several more studios. They struggled last gen due to keeping things exclusive during the launch of the ps4 for either ps3 or ps4. Puppeteer and gt should have been upgraded to the ps4. That is a pro and con of this gen that we have actual cross-gen first party games this time around.
They said multiple times that they grow most of their 1st party studios both because next gen means AAA games requiring more work, and because they want some of their studios to work on multiple games at the same time (it's already the case for several of them). They also mentioned that will continue acquiring new studios too.
Jim Ryan recently said PS5 will have more exclusives than previous consoles. Next gen means to make games becomes more expensive, and also in the recent years the amount of devs and released games skyrocketed, so there's a ton of competition. This means devs need to release their games on more platforms to have a certain stability and make sure they keep profitable. So the timed console exclusives are a better deal for 3r parties, both AAA and indie. And also for Sony, MS and Nintendo, because the investment on a 3rd party timed console exclusive is way cheaper than a full 2nd/3rd party exclusive, but still has the marketing/PR effect.
They sold over 1500 million games for PS4, and released more exclusives and made more money than Microsoft and Nintendo. They outsold 2:1 their direct competition. Multis and exclusives sell better on PS than in Xbox. So they will continue getting more and more exclusives.
Sony needs Japan and they are totally botching it.
In terms of market, Japan is only relevant for Nintendo (not for all Switch games, for Nintendo) and specially mobile.
In terms of game development, PS4 got some exclusive from basically every known big and small Japanese publisher or dev. Jimbo recently said PS5 will have more exclusives than ever and even if Japanese devs shown a big PS5 support since the start, they are working to strengten relationships with Japanese devs to have even more support from them and also to get more games that are appealing to the Japanese market.
If they can't aquire Platinium, Koji Prod or Fromsoft, then make a deal with them and finance some games.
They already had exlusive deals with them on PS4: Babylon's Fall, Death Stranding, Bloodborne, Déraciné. Sony also recently signed a deal with Fromsoft's parent company and signed many recent additional exclusive deals with Babylon's Fall's publisher: Square Enix.
They would be great purchases, but it doesn't depend on Sony. Maybe the owners of the studios don't want to sell, maybe they will be too busy for the next years with games they already signed with other publishers and maybe they prefer working on their own IPs, or prefer to self publish and go multi to keep it more profitable for them.
It's not even that, I'm just quoting what jimbo had been preaching (we believe in generations) as PR as soon as Xbox released their statement of crossgen games would stay for years.
Jimbo said they believe in generations, and explained that with what he meant with that was that wanted PS5 games to use next gen features like DualSense stuff, SSD, 3D audio or RT. He explained that knows that in the first two or three years the big majority of the over 100 million active players they have in PS4 will remain on PS4, so he said that they were going to continue supporting PS4 too during at least 2 or 3 years after the PS5 release.
Nothing beats gaming for cheap
Here's an exclusive game for 70+$ and here's game pass with tons of free games for 10$ a month on average
Jim lives in the old PS3 days where exclusives sold hardware, good luck beating Gamepass and cross-play between XSX/Switch
Jim lives in the PS5 days, where PlayStation dominates Xbox in all fronts:
Where PlayStation continues outselling Xbox by over 2:1 difference, where PlayStation made more yearly revenue in 2020 than any other console manufacturer in gaming history, where PS4 is the console that sold more games in gaming history with over 1500 million games, where they release more exclusives and new IPs than MS, where these exclusives generate more money and win more awards than the MS ones, where PS4 and PS5 have been breaking many gaming history records like the amount of consoles sold at their point of lifetime.
And regarding Gamepass, Jim lives in a world where Sony's game subscripition services has more subscribers (who btw pay a full subscription), generate more money, have a way bigger catalog and are more profitable than the MS ones. And their streaming service performs better, works in consoles and isn't still in beta.
PlayStation dominates Xbox on all fronts and will continue doing so in at least the next few coming years.
Thread is just making me realise that a lack of Bethesda games on Playstation leaves a massive hole in the PS5's lineup.
As of now there are the same Bethesda games on PS5 and Xbox. The next two Bethesda/Zenimax games will be timed console PS5 exclusives. There are many Bethesda games on PS Now. We know that at least some of the future Bethesda/Zenimax games after the ones already signed will focus on 'first or best' on Xbox, which means that will be released on PS5 either at launch or after a timed console exclusive.
And even if wasn't the case and all become full Xbox console exclusives, more than 1500 million games (and counting) have been sold for PS4, and Bethesda games are only a tiny percentage of them, around 1% or 2%. So no, MS purchasing Zenimax won't affect PS5 lineup.