The PS5 has been out for just 6 months, but PlayStation Studios have already put their grand plans for the console to motion with over 25 titles being in various stages of development.
In a new interview with Wired, Hermen Hulst (Head of PlayStation Studios) said that the studio is working on over 2 dozen games for the PS5 including new exclusives and partnerships. Approximately half of these are going to be completely new IP.
“There’s an incredible amount of variety originating from different regions. Big, small, different genres.”
That number may come as a surprise, but PlayStation desire to double down on its world-class IPs is only going to increase with new partnerships and investment. After all, it’s a proven formula with the PlayStation 4’s roaring success. Recently, Sony announced that they are investing an extra $180 million into PS5 exclusive game development. PlayStation Studios is also expanding into PC territory, with Horizon Zero Dawn already on the platform and Days Gone making the jump soon.
Of course, it’s all for nothing if gamers aren’t able to get their hands on the console, which is quite usual with the current chip shortage. Jim Ryan, head of PlayStation reaffirmed that they are working to improve PS5 console supply globally-
“We’re working as hard as we can to ameliorate that situation. We see production ramping up over the summer and certainly into the second half of the year, and we would hope to see some sort of return to normality in terms of the balance between supply and demand during that period.”
Aside from games, PlayStation is also improving quality-of-life features on the PS5 itself, with a discord partnership already announced to come into effect next year.
We didn’t get any confirmations for plans of a PS5 redesign, which is something we saw Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki hint at recently to help with the supply chain issues. Perhaps the bigger elephant in the room is the uncertainty over PlayStation’s rival to Xbox Game Pass, which surely must be a priority for the team right now. Maybe we’ll get a tease of that during E3? While investing in creating more games for the PS5 is definitely exciting, it’s not really helpful if more people can’t afford them with the ridiculous $70 pricing for AAA games, which holds more importance for growing economies like India.
Meanwhile, Xbox has seen increased popularity (and sales) in India thanks to Game Pass and Xbox Game Studios shows no signs of growing. This is also why PlayStation Studios have started to adopt a multi-team approach in most of their studios, with many developers now working on multiple games at the same time.
The PlayStation 5 is out now in India and worldwide, and while Sony has reported record-breaking sales figures, supply is still restricted thanks to a global chip shortage.