By 2025, Sony Interactive Entertainment
"By expanding to PC and mobile, and it must be said... also to live services, we have the opportunity to move from a situation of being present in a very narrow segment of the overall gaming software market, to being present pretty much everywhere," Sony president Jim Ryan was quoted by Video Games Chronicle.
The company said that the new plan will be a significant change from this year's games, only a quarter of which will be released on PC and mobile. The remainder of Sony's 2022 releases will come out on either one or both of the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 consoles.
"PlayStation Studios historically has executed wonderfully in the delivery of a strong portfolio of narrative rich, graphically beautiful single-player games," Ryan said, "but it's certainly the case that we have restricted ourselves to a rather narrow portion of the gaming market."
Sony has seen promising results from the games it's released on PC so far. Last year, Sony brought in $80 million from PC games like Days Gone, Horizon Zero Dawn, and God of War. In 2022, that number is expected to more than triple to $300 million.
Ryan said that focusing on PC releases could produce "significant growth in the number of people who play our games, the number of people who enjoy our games, and the number of people who spend money on our games."
Last year, Sony began its transition away from console gaming when it purchased PC port developer Nixxes Software, known for working on ports of Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Hitman, and Thief for PC. Later in the year, Sony formed its PlayStation PC label, the brand for all Sony PlayStation games available for PC on Steam.
Alongside its expansion into PC porting, Sony also began delving deeper into mobile gaming last year. The company hired several new developers to focus on mobile games, including former content president for Apple
"We have been thinking about how players enjoy our content and have had some early success with experimenting with mobile games and apps to provide more choice to gamers," Ryan said last year. "Mobile is just one of the areas we are exploring to reach millions of gamers beyond our platforms.
The company also announced plans to expand its portfolio of live service games. Last year, Sony had one live service game franchise. This year, it has three. According to the investor presentation, it expects to have 12 live service games by 2025, something Ryan says could be "transformational to our business". In previous announcements, the company had aimed for ten such games by 2026.
In addition to beefing up its PC, mobile, and live service games, Sony also hopes to increase the use of its IPs in television and movies, citing the recent Uncharted movie and HBO's upcoming The Last of Us series.
Also during the presentation, Video Games Chronicle reports that one slide suggested that the company would stop releasing PS4 games by 2025.
