Yesterday PlayStation held their Business Briefing and out of it came a wealth of information about the strength of the PlayStation brand, future investments, planned engagements, and more. You can find the full presentation here and while there are many facets to discuss (which we will do on Bitcast this week), perhaps none are more interesting than PlayStation’s future investment into live-service titles.
Throughout the PS4 generation, and into the beginning of the PS5’s lifespan, we’ve grown accustomed to PlayStation first-party representing the “third-person, narrative adventure” IPs. And it’s hard to argue it hasn’t been extremely successful for them. But as with all things, times change and markets evolve. And it’s clear that PlayStation sees a continued evolution towards micro-transactions and live-service titles.
Taken directly from their presentation, you can see two key indicators. First, they expect micro-transaction revenue to surpass the combined revenue of physical and digital sales by next year (calendar year 2023). And perhaps more notably they are shifting their investment accordingly, with a near 50/50 ratio of live-service to “traditional” investment by fiscal year 2022, and the majority (55%) into live-service by fiscal year 2025.
As you can see below, this marks a stark contrast to where PlayStation focused their efforts even just a few years ago.
It’s clear that PlayStation is shifting their focus for the future. Within the presentation they also showed significant growth in the PC and Mobile markets, as well as near-double subscription revenue growth. It’s worth noting of course, that overall gaming revenue is also expected to continue to grow which should translate into more amazing gaming experiences for all of us.
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