Hermen Hulst: PlayStation's Biggest Single-Player Games Are Also Its Most Profitable - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 04 October 2022 / 2,093 Views
PlayStation Studios head Hermen Hulst in an interview with Axios discussed PlayStation's plans to diversify with developing live service multiplayer games. However, it will continue to develop single-player games.
"We have a history and a reputation for building these incredible narrative-driven single-player games, such as The Last of Us and Horizon and the upcoming God of War Ragnarok," said Hulst.
"We're also diversifying now. And we have stood up 12 projects in total in the live ops multiplayer space."
Hulst revealed some of PlayStation's biggest single-player games are also its most profitable.
"Some of our biggest titles in the single player narrative-driven space are also our most profitable titles," he said.
PlayStation is also looking to release live service games set in some of its most popular single-player IP. "We're not excluding bringing some of our beloved existing franchises into live games," said Hulst.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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"developing love service multiplayer games." - Not sure what kind of market Sony is going for here.
So why the extra $10 price rise?
As long as they keep that in mind they may keep a good balance.
With that said I still miss the era where single player games had multiplayer like TLOU and Bioshock 2.
A lot of users on this site said that PS first party games don’t make money.
What’s going to be?
They made money during the PS4 era, but during the PS3 era, the exclusive playstation games mostly didn't sell that well. Uncharted 4 almost sold more than 1 till 3 combined for example.
Even in the PS3 era 1st party were profitable Shuey then head of world wide studios stated that the profits from each big 1st party game enabled funding for on average seven new games .
What happened next was the PS4 gen was a console that addressed the shortcoming of it s predecessor leading to a perfect storm of rapidly rising hardware sales helping fuel and being fuelled by a wealth of 1st party brands most in Sony's case built up during the PS3 gen, this scenario can also be seen in the sales rise of series like Zelda on the switch.
Well even during the PS3 times it was the SP titles that profited because well sony didn't had many MP or live service games =p
But yes your interpretation is valid. Sony exclusives during PS3 times weren't nowhere as profitable as the PS4 times.
Essay Pro