My Twitter timeline very likely is biased, but I saw like 20 people in my Twitter timeline posting photos of their new PS5 Pro in the last 24 hours or so.
Obviously my timeline is just anecdotal and not representative of the market, but the GTA6 bump is being noticed there.
There's a clear drop off in first party sales, there's no denying that. And yeah, sequels are not as exciting as new IP or reboots that give an IP a second life. Whatever was successful this gen, outside of HD2, is mostly resting on the success from the previous gen where they actually had to take some risks. What is the PS5 gen leaving behind for the PS6 to coast upon? Almost everything that's going to be guaranteed hits on PS6 will once again be continuations of PS4 series.
There’s multiple factors at play influencing this.
The big PS5 titles launched earlier in the lifecycle than PS4 (bigger install base)
Sony stopped aggressively discounting their games, and they sell at a higher price
The rise of PlayStation Plus means prominent games get added 1-2 years after release, which kills legacy unit sales but also props up sub services
So at the end of the day the comparison isn’t all that relevant, a better judge is how the PlayStation business is doing rather than just counting up units
Regarding risks and sales, they did bet more on new IP than ever and than any other big publisher, around half of their projects. They expanded to new genres where previously didn't have a big presence (3d platformers, fighting, several shooter types like coop PvE TPS, etc), platforms, sizes or game types (like MP or GaaS). Acquired new teams and grew existing ones helping them work in more projects at the same times.
Per studio cases:
- Bend: With Days Gone grew to go back to home console AAA -and to open world- with a new IP after a very long making only portable games, a big risk. It sold more games than all their previous games combined. The safe option after it would have been a conservative sequel, they risked with another new IP and moving to add MP with GaaS elements instead, again a big risk. Did some safe stuff too to compensate (post launch content, port, remaster, support and a way more conservative current main project)
- Media Molecule: after being profitable with all their projects, Dreams was a very experimental and risky project. Didn't have great sales but won many awards and kept supporting it for 3 years adding stuff like VR support. Later switched to an unannounced project that apparently is a less ambitious, more traditional videogame
- ND: Traditionally had a single big team, but decided to split TLOU2 MP team into a standalone GaaS game, a risky option that they later cancelled. They grew to do that project, the TLOU2 SP team later moved to a new IP (Intergalactic, risky) and grew more to have another team (and apparently, recently another one) working on an unannounced SP AAA game plus smaller teams to mostly train juniors and support and manage external teams (ports, remakes, remasters, off-gaming projects)
- Guerrilla: Horizon 1 became the best selling Sony game ever, so decided the risky option of growing to work at the same time in Horizon 2 (which had similar sales to H1 until they did the risky experiment of putting it early than usual in PS+ and 3 after it), Horizon MP with a new team and additional smaller teams supporting/overviewing external teams Horizon mobile, Horizon VR and later Horizon Lego and remaster and now the off-gaming adaptation
- SSM: After breaking records for a Sony game with GoW 2018 they did take the risk of growing to work in multiple projects at the same time: one team did GoWR while other was working on ('new' IP) Laufey and smaller teams worked in Valhalla and to support / manage external teams working on ports or Sons of Sparta, GoW Trilogy Remake and now overviewing the off-gaming adaptation
- Polyphony and San Diego: Both grew (Polyphony now has 4 studios) but continued working in their main IPs successfully expanding in their GaaS side making more money than ever
- Bungie: took the risk of acquiring it being bloated and with the numbers in the red, as planned incubated Team LFG (who seems will release their game in a year or so), moved some staff to other SIE/PS Studios teams to also work in other GaaS, released Marathon (performing under expectations) and their first mobile title Destiny Rising (successful release), restructured it a couple times to change its management and debloat it, and Destiny 2 had highs and lows performing worse than projected but achieving a big success with The Final Shape, resulting on D2 lasting more than initially project (probably to compensate that a new Destiny project got cancelled)
- Concord: took the risk on betting in a AAA new IP made by a new (mainly ex-Bungie) veterans team, got released but didn't work. Some of them got moved to other teams like Bungie or Haven and the studio got shut down
- Kojipro: after becoming profitable -but not a huge sales hit- and won many awards with the super risky and experimental Death Stranding 1, which apparently is the best selling Kojima game ever, went safer with a sequel that was a great game but seems isn't performing as well in sales. Kojima ended getting this IP, and the apparently very expensive (so risky) Physint which due to some reason ended at MS, like OD
- Helldivers 2: the first one was a small scale success, but they did bet -important risk- on growing with the sequel making it a very ambitious AAA GaaS game releasing day one on PC, where Hermen allowed them to have a 5 years long delay- and ended in a huge success.
- Deviation/Dark Outlaw: did bet on a veterans new team making a AAA GaaS new IP (which got cancelled and the studio got shut down), part of the team created a new studio to make a non-GaaS AAA new IP (which also got cancelled and the studio got shut down)
- Acquired or created support studios like Nixxes (who did successful, very profitable ports), Bluepoint (who got shut down after supporting in GoWR and failed on trying to make their own project), Valkyrie (successfully supported in GoW series, Astrobot or Helldivers 2) or PS Studios Malaysia
- Sucker Punch: their AAA new IP (so risky) GoT became their best selling game ever, did the sequel (safe bet) replacing the iconic protagonist with a woke replacement (risky) and so far seems to be performing like the first one or a bit better
- Returnal: released a risky project which was their first AAA game and a new IP that conceptually was pretty experimental. Won some awards, was their best selling game ever, got acquired and later quickly released a similar new IP iterating and polishing the formula
- Firesprite: got acquired, released the best selling PSVR2 game working with Guerrilla to make a VR adaptation of their best selling IP (risky), hired many former Supermassive devs and will release soon Until Dawn 2, sequel of a niche hidden gem that wasn't a top seller (risky)
- Insomniac: did continue betting (safe) on Spider-Man 2 (broke sales records) and Ratchet (seems the fastest selling one) sequels and now on a Wolverine/X-Men adaptation. They'll continue with these IPs plus are planned to work in a new one
- XDEV: the USA and JP teams followed the steps of their EU team branching out from local gamedev studios to have their own office (risky), stopping to report to these local teams to become different branches of a global team. Took the risk of investing on new genres, teams and countries (their Japanese branch was tasked with also publishing non-Japanese Asian game) and got mixed results but generally successful and profitable titles like Returnal, DSDC, Rise of the Ronin, DS2, Stellar Blade, Saros, Lost Soul Aside, Marvel Tokon. Physint and maybe Convallaria got cancelled
- Team Asobi: after a failed attempt of making mobile games, the internal development teams of Japan Studio merged their internal development teams into one of them, Team Asobi, in a restructuring that reduced the team plus branched off their XDEV team (in the past already was formally a separate team) and released their most successful internally developed game ever, Astro Bot
- After working on experimental risky stuff (VR, Erika...) London tried to work on a AAA GaaS new IP (risky bet, their first AAA since The Getaway or PS Home) that didn't work and got shut down
- The very small and experimental Pixel Opus team did try to collaborate with Sony Animation to work on a project that got cancelled and got shut down
- First Contact: after the successful Firewall in PSVR1, Sony published this external team the PSVR2 PvP FPS GaaS sequel Firewall Ultra, a risky bet that didn't work and got shut down some time after release
- Velan (Knockout City): Sony published them the experimental MP FPS Midnight Murder Club, a small profile low budget title that doesn't seem to be a hit but continues alive
How is that better? You cannot gain any meaningful insights about how their first party is performing by doing a comparison of the whole business now vs. then. Because less than 10% of their game sales are first party and even less of their revenue. The only thing you can compare is first party sales, and those have been declining. The fact that there are factors contributing to that doesn't change the fact that they're declining. And that those factors are in Sony's control in the first place. You can make the same arguments for why physical sales are declining (well, they're actually going up again), but you don't try to rationalize it in that case.
Also when it comes to PS+, this is a chicken and egg story. What seems to be more the case now (after some initial experiments) is that the titles go into PS+ when they stop selling, not the other way around (i.e. they stop selling when they go into PS+). Most PS4 games also sold more in their 2-year launch window (before price drops and sub inclusions) than they are doing now. And likewise many of these first party games were given away as part of the monthly PS+ games prior to the new catalog sub tiers.
Compared to previous gen their first party game sales in units for PS declined, but games are more expensive and also now have way more revenue from off-PS revenue (game ports reported separatedly) and a bigger bet on GaaS (which means way more revenue from first party addons revenue). Plus other than this, the extra from off-gaming adaptations that this gen we also have more in number and results.
PS+ had a meaningful growth this gen and I assume the money PS+ provides to first party too, but I assume it's minimal compared to total sales. We can argue putting a game in PS+ cannibalizes game sales, but Sony often puts them there late, when the game already has very low sales so the impact is minimal.
In any case, we had many reports during this gen of some PS published game became the best seller / fastest seller / top grossing game ever for their team, IP or even for any PS Studios in history: Days Gone, Death Stranding, TLOU2, Spider-Man 2, GoWR, Helldivers 2, Returnal, Tsushima (maybe Yotei), Gran Turismo 7, Stellar Blade, Astro Bot... meaning even if PS+ cannibalizes sales down the road they're doing a great job.
