Sony Confirms it Has Delayed First-Party PlayStation Titles - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 September 2023 / 10,947 Views
Sony President and CFO Hiroki Totoki in a livestream video to investors revealed Sony Interactive Entertainment has delayed at least first-party PlayStation titles. He did not state how many games or exactly which games have been delayed.
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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does it mean PlayStation sells well only with third-party titles or does it sell well even not launching its first-party titles? '-
The first, if PS5 would have no third party support it would sell worse than Xbox. Most people buy a Playstation to buy COD, GTA, FIFA/FC and games like Witcher Resident Evil, Monster Hunter and Elden Ring. If all those wouldn't come to PlayStation it wouldn't sell.
Opposite for me as well, but that's because I typically own all major platforms. In most cases, I buy third party games on Xbox, because for the last couple generations, I have had Xboxes in multiple rooms. So, PlayStation is primarily for first party, or third party exclusives.
But, the average person does not own multiple consoles. And it's very easy to see that the most popular games are not first party titles. So common sense tells us that most people buy a console to play third party games.
Same here, if PS exclusives weren't my general favorite games I would probably be PC centric gamer.
V-rock, not that. What he meant is that if Xbox got all/most third party titles and PS none/few the 1st party wouldn't hold PS up like Nintendo done with Wii and Switch.
I don't think it can even be analyzed with those 2 metrics as separate ones. They are both only parts of what constitutes the offering and it's the offerings overall that create an incentive to buy.
PS5 third-party sales are healthy cause 1st party are healthy and 1st party sales are healthy cause 3rd party sales are.
I've bought a ton of games this year. None of them first party.
Crisis Core, Fairy Fencer F, FF16, FF Final Bar, Atelier 3, Octo Path 2, One piece O, Star Ocean Divine, Midnight Suns
The lets keeps going and going. Including Alan wake 2, Disgaea 7, Persona Tactics, DQ Monsters. Oh and of course an actual first part - Spider man.
Disgaea 3 was a bigger system seller than Uncharted as far as the Vita goes.
HellDivers 2 is scheduled to be published by Sony this year. Unless it is one of the titles that has been delayed.
HellDivers 2 is good guess. The other ones speculated are Naughty Dog's long-in-development The Last of Us multiplayer project, which was rumored to be an early 2024 release, and Stellar Blade. Stellar Blade is another one that is not developed by Sony directly, but will be published by Sony, and is still on their TBA 2023 release calendar.
Sounds to me like they want to position for a better yield of sales to better profit within target months they are more comfortable with instead of just throwing them out within busier months and having to wrestle for sales with multiple parties.
Either way, their delays can't be anywhere as bad as ubisoft's, so I doubt there's much to wrry about spaces being filled.
Been a long time that Sony put their first parties on the less busy windows, perhaps these internal delays are 1-3 months and well none of the titles that got release date (not many) have formally been delayed yet.
It seems to me that Sony's plan was to minimise the uncertainty that surrounds any new console regardless of the success or otherwise of its predecessor and lessen the chance of any decrease in market share , and that plan was to do it by getting most of their big first party games out early , but offsetting the smaller install base by making them cross gen, knowing there would be a gap followed by a second wave of 1st party games hopefully full of many of those new first party PS5 titles in the pipeline we have heard about but don't know much about .
Filling the gap gap relies on whatever big 3rd party titles they have slated for that time along with some smaller 1st party games but from a 1st party perspective if any of those first party games become delayed it exacerbates the situation more than it normally would hence why we are seeing his commentary.
On another note depending on release dates for some of those paid for 3rd party games, this is probably the time where paying for those 3rd party deals really helps them.
Overall this generation has been pretty lackluster so far. We're almost 3 years in and the catalog is still weak.
I'm still using Switch pretty regularly because of the superlative library of games I haven't played yet.
Agree . Got ps5 Nd have been playing the PS4, games I bought but never opened lol
These must be internal delays because few titles have had publicly shared release dates or windows.
"The other one is the foreign exchange rates, we have revised it to a weaker yen situation. So that would push sales up."
Interestingly, unlike some other markets, game pricing in Canada fluctuates nearly constantly, in $5 increments, with the exchange rate. Which doesn't happen in every country. One AAA release might be $80, the next $85, the one after that $75, the one after that $70, etc., depending on what the currency is doing. And interestingly, once they've set a price they don't modify it, until an official price drop for that game.
Though in fairness, it fluctuates in line with USD, not with the Yen, so if the Yen drops to the USD this statement is still correct, even for Canada.
Interesting tidbit, in Brazil I would say the price doesn't seem to vary sensibly with exchange ratio with USD or Yen, most PS AAA prices have been stable 350 or 400 BRL for vanilla editions since the start of the gen. Price of console have been stable 4k and 4.5k as well for digital and disc editions. What have happened is more promotions happening (maybe better exchange ratio or just the product life cycle).
Yeah, Canada is the only market I'm aware of where AAA pricing fluctuates nearly constantly. :)
Hopefully not Spider-Man. I'd gladly take delays to November or December (or even into 2024) for a more stable game and a better work-life balance for devs. I just hope it isn't that game in particular, as it's high on my hype list.
The audacity.
Both consoles really lacking on first party games this time around. Xbox has been in the mud a long time but Playstation's goodwill from good support last gen is only recently starting to wear thin.
This was already confirmed on the financial report so it isn't really a confirmation, more like some additional info.
