Sony has announced that it has no plans to produce new entries in its existing major franchises, such as God of War and Marvel’s Spider-Man, between April 2024 and March 2025.
Don’t worry, there’s some context to that admission that may help you understand why it’s likely to be the case, rather than anything that should be cause for fear. All you have to do is dive into the fascinating world of Sony’s most recent financial results call.
In the company’s discussion of its fortunes (thanks, VGC) during the three-month period that ended on December 31, 2023, Hiroki Totoki, Sony’s president, COO, and CFO, revealed that: “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.”
However, he did underline that the company’s “first-party software” is still focused on “producing high-quality productions and producing live service games”. Given that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 only arrived on PS5 in late October last year, with God of War: Ragnarok’s Valhalla DLC following shortly after, it’s maybe not unexpected that there aren’t any major PlayStation releases in the works for the coming fiscal year.
Furthermore, as part of the same financial briefing, Totoki stated that the PS5 is entering its fifth year of service since its launch, putting it in “the latter half of the console cycle,” a period when Sony is “[expecting] a gradual decline in unit PS5 sales from next fiscal year onwards” due to a combination of the two factors listed thus far.
So, there’s no motivation to hurry out any big titles to capitalise on or improve the sales of a system that’s either just released or still in its early stages. Especially since Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 has already sold over 10 million units on the PS5, marking two years in a row of large PlayStation titles being released and performing well.
In addition, the financial briefing indicated that software sales across PS4 and PS5 during that three-month period increased by 3.2 million units year on year, indicating that there are still lots of consumers buying PlayStation games.
So, even though it may not have met its own PS5 sales targets last year, things appear to be going well in PlayStation land. Now we just have to wait and see who Intergalactic The Heretic Prophet turns out to be.
