Sony Gives More Details on Boosting its First-Party Game Development

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During the Q&A session of the recent Investor Day hosted by Sony Corporation in Tokyo, Sony Interactive Entertainment President and CEO John Kodera was asked to provide further information on the plans to provide more first-party games for PlayStation consoles.

Kodera-san talked about the first-party pipeline (the games in development at first-party studios), mentioning that there are “a few items” in development as always. Yet, compared to fiscal year 2017 (from April 2017 to March 2018) and fiscal year 2018 (from April 2018 to March 2019, IE: the current year), the pipeline is going to be further “improved and increased,” so expenses are likely to increase accordingly.

Later in the Q&A, Kodera-san also added that investing in first-party games does not just mean increasing the number of IPs, as Sony owns existing IPs like Horizon Zero Dawn and God of War, and “successful and powerful” IPs should be made into franchises so that “the business associated with them can be expanded.”

The further improvement of the first-party development pipeline from April 2019 is certainly interesting, as it could indicate that Sony intends to have an ever stronger first-party support for the PS5 (or whatever the next-generation PlayStation console will be called).

A more interesting detail can be seen in the slide below related to the current fiscal year (until April 2019), showing that research and development investment has been increased. Interestingly, this is a further increase from the fiscal year 2017, in which R&D investment was already boosted.

That being said, Kodera-san declined to comment to specific questions regarding the next-generation PlayStation console.