Initially, I thought this might be an April Fools’ joke, but it turns out that Jim Ryan is serious about it.
During an interview on the Official PlayStation Podcast commemorating his retirement, Jim Ryan, the head of Sony’s PlayStation division was questioned about his perspectives on Sony’s standing in the gaming market moving forward.
Despite Sony’s stock value recently taking a significant hit following their recent earnings report, where they acknowledged that the PlayStation 5 console fell short of projected sales targets, the company also announced that they won’t be releasing a major first-party game until at least 2025.
Ryan emphasized that PlayStation is currently “at the top of our game” and that Sony remains “consistent about what stands for great consoles.” This statement brings to mind the period when Sony intensified its focus on globalization and started excessively adhering to Western policies.
This involved the implementation of arbitrary censorship policies on the PlayStation 4, which officially commenced around 2018 and intensified the following year. Coincidentally, this escalation coincided with Jim Ryan assuming his position.
These censorship policies have unfairly scrutinized Japanese developers and end consumers. Additionally, combined with Sony’s efforts to distance itself from mainland Japan by relocating the headquarters for Sony Interactive Entertainment to California, these policies have damaged their reputation and standing with dedicated gamers worldwide, particularly those located in Japan.
In his interview, Jim Ryan asserted that Sony currently offers a “great console gaming experience and great games.” However, I find this claim puzzling given how the PlayStation 5 lacks significantly in the “exclusives” department while being massively inferior in terms of performance and capabilities versus Microsoft’s XBOX Series X.
Sony has been expanding the PlayStation brand by releasing first-party games on the PC platform, much like Microsoft has been doing for years.
Much like Microsoft’s console, the PlayStation 5 is essentially a multiplatform machine ties you into monthly service subscriptions, where you’re required to pay premium prices for lackluster releases repeatedly.
Furthermore, the system has barely any exclusives to call its own, as they’re gradually being ported to PC one by one. The latest example is Horizon Forbidden West.
Game developers continue to develop and cater to previous generation consoles like the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles as this latest generation has proven to be rather lackluster in terms of adoption rate by consumers.
Ryan continued to make another remark that “he number of games we’ve published so far on PlayStation 5 at this point in the cycle, way exceeds anything that we’ve ever done before.“
However, he omitted any discussion regarding the criticism surrounding those games. For instance, games like Spider-Man 2 faced numerous complaints for its benign woke propaganda. This was especially notable considering Insomniac Games had contracted Sweet Baby Inc for narrative consultancy.
Moreover, out of all twelve titles exclusive to the PlayStation 5 at this point, Marvel’s Wolverine is still years away from completion, while Astro’s Playroom serves as a mere tech demo. Rise of the Ronin is a poor man’s version of Ghosts of Tsushima mixed with elements of Nioh, and the Demon’s Souls remake is complete and utter dogshit, a spit in the face to FromSoftware’s original 2009 release.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is expected to head to PC eventually, given its predecessor’s timed exclusivity, along with Final Fantasy XVI. Stellar Blade is likely to follow suit, potentially arriving on PC by the end of the year so long as Sony wants to actually make money. Players might have to wait until 2025 to get their hands on Spider-Man 2, while the remaining titles are generally lackluster.
Regarding Jim Ryan’s assertion that Sony has published the most games on the PlayStation 5, surpassing their previous efforts, it is frankly untrue. In reality, Sony has been on a downward trend since the PlayStation 2 era.
This decline can be attributed to various factors, including the fact that as technology advances and newer generation consoles boast increased capabilities, game development times have lengthened, accompanied by rising development costs.
Sony is well acquainted with the escalating costs of game development. The number of exclusives from the original PlayStation dwindled with each subsequent generation. The PlayStation 3 was criticized for “having no games,” despite the fact that the PlayStation 4 fared far worse, having barely twenty major first-party console only exclusives released throughout its lifespan.
As the PlayStation 5 nears the end of its life cycle, speculation about a PlayStation 5 Pro grows stronger by the day. The costs associated with modern game development are soaring, with titles like Horizon Forbidden West, The Last of Us Part 2, and Spider-Man 2 each costing hundreds of millions of dollars.
In contrast, Nintendo stands out as the only console maker that consistently manages its budgets effectively.
“If we don’t introduce innovative ideas, games themselves will become monotonous and boring. Additionally, “grand and elaborate” types of software are complex in content, requiring time, labor, and expenses to produce. Even if billions of yen are invested and a hit game sells a million copies, it might still be at a loss. In that case, it’s not sustainable as a business. Even a “light, simple, and compact” game can be well-crafted and enjoyable.”
Hiroshi Yamauchi – President of Nintendo 1949-2002
However, the video game industry is facing challenges that threaten its sustainability. Mass layoffs occur frequently as studios grapple with their bloated staff numbers, often filled with activists and inexperienced personnel.
The industry is now driven by diversity and inclusivity which has caused studios to seek guidance from consultancy firms like Sweet Baby Inc or Black Girl Gamers, resulting in watered-down narratives and character race swaps to meet diversity quotas.
These games must sell millions of units to recoup their investments as video game companies pursue ESG hedge fund investments as an easy source of cash, thankfully Larry Fink’s promises of easy finance are going up in smoke left and right.
In essence, modern video games resemble blockbuster Hollywood movies more than ever before, despite ballooning budgets consumers aren’t obligated to buy progressive trash, resulting in many game developers either going under entirely or losing a considerable amount of their value due to consistent underperforming products.
As previously mentioned, for most game developers their focus on releasing games on a Sony PlayStation system prioritize a release on the PlayStation 4 instead, given how the PS4 has sold over 100 million consoles worldwide after a whole decade following its release, the PS5 has repeatedly missed sales targets and pales in comparison to previous generation hardware, especially Nintendo’s little handheld that seemingly refuses to die.
Nintendo remains the sole console manufacturer avoiding massive expenditures on first-party games, yet continues to outsell both Microsoft and Sony with its $300 portable brick featuring hardware internals that are over a decade old.
This is attributed to the Nintendo Switch being the only platform not actively censoring Japanese developers, offering exclusives worth playing.
Forgetting about the plethora of games available only on the Nintendo Switch and PC as the only platforms, the latest Famitsu sales figures from March 18th to 24th reveal Japanese consumers purchasing over 46,000 Switch OLED consoles, 7,826 Switch Lite consoles, and 6,151 standard Switch consoles, compared to 24,183 PlayStation 5 systems (including 3,605 digital editions).
This is due to its consistent delivery of games, free from arbitrary censorship catering to an elusive “modern audience” that appears reluctant to invest in modern games at present.
Despite being vastly inferior and barely any cheaper, the Nintendo Switch consistently outperforms Microsoft and Sony in adoption rates and sales, which is why it was recently reported that the system had sold almost 140 million units since its release back in 2017.
It’s hardly surprising that Jim Ryan would be misleading about Sony’s supposed accomplishments as he heads out the door, especially considering that under his leadership, he played a significant role in the design and development of the PlayStation 5 console. Unfortunately, it ended up being severely underpowered compared to their main rival.
With Sony’s censorship policies firmly in place, the only accomplishment Jim Ryan can truly claim is driving the final nail in the coffin for Sony in the console market as they are swiftly transitioning into a publishing label, as their only noteworthy games are being released on PC.
