Sony CFO: We Don't Have Enough Original IP - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 December 2024 / 6,080 Views
Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki speaking with Financial Times stated Sony doesn't have enough original IP. This includes for games, films, and anime.
"Whether it's for games, films or anime, we don't have that much IP that we fostered from the beginning," Totoki. "We're lacking the early phase (of IP) and that's an issue for us."
He added that Sony has been better at growing its audiences for its current popular IPs and thinks the company won't grow without creating new IP.
Thanks, PlayStationLifestyle.
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.
More Articles
Really? Because I can immediately think of 10 dead Sony IPs I would love to see again.
Please list them.
Twisted Metal, Sly Cooper, Jak & Daxter, Resistance, Ape Escape, WipeOut, Gravity Rush, Killzone, Infamous, and SOCOM were the ones that immediately came to my mind. I know I'm missing quite a few others though.
Mostly good picks here. Sly Cooper really needs a boost after Sly 4's bullshit.
Omega Boost. Wild Arms. Rogue Galaxy. Dark Cloud. Parappa. Vib Ribbon. Hot Shots Golf. Mark of Kri. Folklore.
Vib Ribbon is so special :D You could play it without a disc on PS1 and play to your own audio CD! Very unique game.
They may have less than Xbox now that Activision is on board but come on, Resistance, Sly, Jak, Killzone, Lemmings, Infamous, Twisted Metal, Syphon Filter, Gravity Rush.
Those aren't popular
How many of those IPs are Sony originals or even active today?
Syphon Filter, unless I’m missing some announcement, hasn’t been active in several generations. Lemmings, if it is the DMA game, predates PlayStation and was developed by a third party which, at the time, was tied to Nintendo.
if they really want to strengthen PlayStation IP game, releasing only a handful of games isn’t going to help. It would also be nice if PlayStation actually brought back more franchises instead of just throwing Easter Eggs in games.
I think many people in this thread are misinterpreting his comments. He's not talking about games in particular. He's talking about all media. They need huge franchises. Not little things that made a small splash in gaming 25 years ago when the industry was much smaller.
The ps2 sold 155- 160mill.. the industry was huge even back then.
i agree, lets get some more big sony games going!!!
Based on how we're not getting a Days Gone sequel, they are probably only referring to big 10+ million selling-IP's. And seeing how they already have half a dozen such series (Horizon, God of War, Uncharted, The Last of Us, Gran Turismo, and Ghost of Tsushima), they honestly should have that covered.
Revive the dead ones!
What he really means: We don't want to bring back most of our dead or dormant IPs and we're struggling to think of new ones.
The only PS1 Sony IP still going strong is Gran Turismo. The only PS2 Sony IPs still going strong are Ratchet & Clank, and God of War. PS3 is a bit better, and of course PS4.
You're telling me they can't bring back
Twisted Metal, Resistance, Infamous, Ape Escape, and Killzone? And those are just a small list.
Gravity Rush 3 with PS5 graphics, a man can dream!
Just give us what we want Sony!
Killzone trilogy remastered hd
Resistance trilogy remastered hd
Bloody include multiplayer and that's fcken icing on the cake
Bloodborne remaster
New killzone or resistance game
New Driveclub
New Motorstorm
New Gravity rush
New infamous
New uncharted
God of war remake?
Horizon zero dawn remake (so early)
Littlebigplanet
How about bringing LoD back? Screw you, Sony, you have a lot of IPs.
What Sony needs to invest in is story tellers and writers. I think it’s great to have original IP. But Sony can look into their library of movies and games to create more games spin-offs. Branching stories. Everything from I Am Legend to Hancock to Underworld. There’s just so much that they can use to ensure they are balancing storey driven games that they’re better at along with live service games that are unique and don’t suck.
A very short statement really, hard to fully know what he means but isn't that what your R&D are for? It doesn't take you finding studios working on something already then paying them off to create. Sony can come up with this themselves but alas, outside of a few most of their biggest games for their platforms are not their IPs.
Yet, they could hire and entire team of people whos job it is to come up with game concepts, both new and old, take existing IPs or create new and basically farm them out to 1st studios or get 2nd party (commission studios) to make them. Let those studios have creative freedom on the IP but you own it.
Film, anime and TV is harder however. Most modern big productions are owned IPs already, prehaps this is what he truely means. Sony cannot outbid many of these massive studios for rights on existing IPs to 'own them'. So they need to create to do that but not everything you create will be a hit.
Revived Omega Boost. Wild Arms. Ape Escape. Sly Cooper. YOu have plenty to revive that are good.
Are people really falling for this. How funny. This is supposed to be first big propaganda distraction story after the Concorde humiliation. Oh my god it’s not even close to working.
Simple: Revive or dust off the chalk board, cus why tf is this the consumers problem?
If they didn't try to go all in on GaaS, they would probably have all kinds of great games coming out. Wasted all their studios on that bullcrap when they could've been releasing what they are good at: releasing new IP every generation like they always do.
When it comes to gaming, they have shown time and again that they are able to create successful single player IPs from scratch. So maybe concentrate on that, instead of this woeful crusade into the lands MMO. Just saying.
He must be high right?
So many bad azz dormant i.p waiting to be revived,
Hell get bluepoint to remake dino crisis or silent hill 1 u can fcken do it Sony
Translation: "we don't want to do anything with them, renew trademarks or anything. They don't fit our current strategy and we will sound as professional as possible and accept no further questions about it.
We don't want to outsource the IPs to other studios, renew trademarks, do anything with them whether backgrounds, OSTs or more, the costs are too much then a return/too much effort to build up so were going to take the easy/lazy way out.
WipEout Rush was an experiment, we dont' care customers are buying up Fast Racing, Redout and more, we didn't care to put it on console, we don't care it failed on mobile offered a bad manager game then a good one, we don't care about the IP/competition it had/where their audience is and 3rd party competitors many of that audience are buying up with this genre seeing a revival and enjoying those. We don't care deal with it.
What do you mean we built up Twisted Metal again with a TV show, that was an exception case don't think it applies to the rest of our IPs we don't care to do anything with anymore."
Absolutely lazy and pathetic. They have plenty, they just don't want to make any merch, tv show, games, books or do anything else with them. They have no studios or people smart enough to find out ways to use them and they are too lazy to do anything about it.
They have their staying power they just don't care to check how large that audience is, how they may or may not have changed or built them up again even though it won't be from scratch.
They wouldn't have done 3 MP only games on PS3 yet they allowed Concord and Haven's game. Do they have any brains at all left in there. Yes it's been years, do they even care or know about the Starhawk revival project, PS Home, etc.
Do they think for long enough in a day at all how fans/casuals/new to the platform (kids or adults getting into gaming for the first time) would get into these old IPs?
As if the Twisted Metal TV show to build up that IP again without a game 'wasn't them seeing how the IP still does in the market'. They just make up nonsense for the sake of it. Go for 1 IP and go eh were too lazy to focus on the others right now. Is it costly sure, but just ignoring it/playing it off professionally, we know they are just lazy/lying to us.
As if throwing WIpEout Rush on mobile was a great idea when the revival for genre anti-grav genre is on console you idiots. The competition on mobile to push WipEout into was so stupid. Why else would we be buying Fast Racing, Redout or others Sony.
This is like Xbox as well saying 'we will do things but we really won't with kid friendly IPs or appealing to Japan. They do the bare minimum of appealing to Japan with deals, sure OG Xbox/360 they tried but it was also a different time as well.
That and what kid IPs, whether new ones or old ones to revive like Blinx they choose not to because they don't care. They appeal to kids via trendy games, sure that may be a majority sure but it isn't EVERYONE, some still want to or are forced to play singleplayer or co-op games, they seem to forget some families will still buy an Astro, a Ratchet, a Sackboy, Nintendo games, any third parties on their platforms but a 1st party one by Double Fine or something small to happen, nah why bother.
Sony openly said they pulled back on launching 1st party games because of the rising cost of development. That being said they have so many recognizable games they could tap back into. Killzone, Resistance, Heavy Rain, Detroit Become Human, Uncharted, Sly Cooper, Jak & Daxter, Socom, SSX, Burnout, Syphon Filter, Infamous ect. They are just not and it's annoying. Not every game needs to be 50 hours long either.
SSX and Burnout are not Sony games.
Replace them with Gravity Rush, Omega Boost, Colony Wars, Patapon, Loco Rocco, Devil Dice, Kula World (Rollaway), Siren, LBP, LOD, Twisted Metal, Wipeout and you good to go!
Translation: "Outside ASOBI, we aren't competent enough - from top to bottom - to create anything but movie-games anymore. We actually have like 40 IP we have no idea what to do with."
Concord was original...
GIVE ME SLY COOPER AND TWISTED METAL YOU ABSOLUTE COAWRDS...
Seriously, we've seen Crash, Conker, Spyro, Medevil, fucking Bubsy and now Croc getting remasters/remakes, and Sly/Jak & Daxter are still nowhere to be found.
I haven't seen a good Twisted Metal game since Black, and that was way, way back in the PS2 era, like 3 console generations ago...
No shit, and thats why you shut down Japan Studios the only ones making good games, now you have Firesprite making concord 🤣
That's the thing with creating original IP. It takes time and money. And so much more.
Microsoft learned the lesson the hard way. They'd built 3 big seller original IPs in 24 years of Xbox.
Until they went and bought ~25 of big third party IPs.
I can’t believe the Sony head said that. Sony has an abundance of IP’s they could bring back but for some reason they want to force GAAS games on us. We didn’t ask for Concord!!!!
Yeah, it definitely seems like an issue for them. On the tier of sales that Sony seems to want from their IP these days, they have maybe 8 or 9 IP, the most recent of which were Ghost of Tsushima and Helldivers (after 2 exploded the popularity of the IP). They have a bunch more that are mid tier IP in terms of sales, but Sony seem to not be ok with middling sales these days, which is why so many of their mid-tier IP are sitting dormant right now, IP like Jak and Daxter, SOCOM, Killzone, Infamous, Sly Cooper, Resistance, etc. They also cancelled Days Gone 2, and Days Gone sold 7.32 million copies by February 2022 according to the files that were stolen in the Insomniac hack, so clearly Sony mainly want 10m+ selling IP these days.
They're figuring this out NOW?!!
compared to Nintendo it is NOT enough, compared to Xbox it is MORE than enough
The world is waiting for more Blasto. That could be new games, a film with Chris Pratt and anime.
Well it's a good thing Xbox is about to put all their IP on PlayStation then.
... and you have too many people obsessed with censorship!
Sony have loads of IPs (defo not on MSFT's scale even before abk) - just not enough large studios to work on them alongside their existing franchises.
I think they may be talking more about the film side. In terms of gaming, they have a lot of IPs, but relatively few on the level of something like Mario or Halo in terms of popularity.
Essay Pro