During their presentation at their annual investor day, Sony have announced that they aim to have roughly half of all game releases to be on PC and/or mobile by 2025, while the rest remain on their PlayStation Consoles.
The announcement marked the company’s move to expand the PlayStation brand beyond console gaming, also mentioning more investment in TV and Movies.
“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,” said Jim Ryan, President of Sony Interactive Entertainment.
In a chart shown during the presentation, the 2019 fiscal year saw only 10% of games released on PC, while this year roughly 25% of games were released on PC.
While an increase for 50% alongside mobile is ambitious, the company are already moving in strides to make it happen. Sony have brought a number of established titles to PC such as God of War, Days Gone and Horizon Zero Dawn, which resulted in a net sales increase from $80 million USD ($112 million AUD) in 2021 to a forecasted $300 million USD ($420 million AUD) this year.
Sony have since launched a PlayStation PC label and acquired a PC port developer. In a trend the company have followed of late, this may in part be to directly combat the growing PC presence of Xbox. When Microsoft secured a deal with Activision-Blizzard, Sony bought Bungie. Sony are also replicating Xbox Games Pass with their own PlayStation Plus Premium subscription.
While Microsoft games have usually ended up on PC for obvious reasons, it seems Sony are looking to even the playing field.
In regard to mobile games, former Apple Arcade content boss Nicola Sebastiani joined PlayStation Studios to focus on mobile content. Sony hopes to develop games both with existing developers as well as with its own studios. Moving to mobile makes sense, as 52% of gaming revenue comes from the mobile market.
