I'm not trying to downplay the effects of the pandemic, but I think that also exposed areas in Sony's pipeline that could be improved. It also showed, IMO, that certain steps to address the pandemic might've seemed good in the short-term but have been creating some issues in the long-term.
For example, if Sony had more 1P AA games in development, we likely would have been seeing a few more AA non-GAAS 1P titles released across the end of the pandemic and going into this year. By "1P" here I mean internally-developed games, of course. And things like the PC porting strategy might've been "fine" for short-term revenue boosts but it's now created a situation where all but a small handful of 1P games have gone to PC or will be there by year's end, betraying the original purpose of the strategy (to use the ports as a "sampling" of 1P offerings to non-console owners in pursuit of driving demand and purchase of the console itself).
Now that the pandemic is behind us, we can only hope SIE have been taking the necessary measures to restructure things the correct way. And I don't think that means doubling-down on the PC initiative or getting more aggressive with it, for starters, or continuing to shun 1P AA game development, or ignoring mobile as a smart market for growth i.e the Nintendo way vs. PC which is causing cannibalization due to heavily increased crossover in large chunks of the customer bases.
We already know what their PC strategy is going to be: Concord, Fairgame$, Marathon, and any other Bungie games (like Matter) day one on PC. And maybe more of the GaaS PS Studios has in the works. Plus more ports of 2+ years old SP games, some of them remastered/remade like Until Dawn.
Sony is becoming one of the top Steam publishers, maybe even the top 1 (at least for new releases / paid games) and only released a single GaaS there. When having released a few more, that will be a huge revenue and profit source, generating them in a few years from now over a steady billion in profit per year only from PC. Which is good.
We also already know they have been working during years on their future expansion to mobile, making deals with many expert top companies like Tencent, Netease, MiHoyo, NC Soft, Akatsuki and so on, who will help bring their IPs to mobile, plus their internal Neon Koi and non-SIE Sony mobile games like Fate/Grand Order. We also know they have been working for years to bring their cloud gaming to mobile.
They are pushing now to expand and grow in MP/GaaS and PC. In 2-3 years (around PS6 release) the expansion there will be complete, so I assume at that point, once they have a steady flow of profits coming from there and enough experimented teams working on them, they'll move their expansion efforts from MP/GaaS and PC to mobile.
They are also heavily expanding bringing their movies to movies, tv shows, anime and theme parks, with like 10 projects in the works. I assume many of them will be released in 2-3 years, also generating them a good chunk of profits. I assume at that point they'll also shift their expansion efforts to other non-gaming fields. As could be maybe collaborating more with Sony Music (tribute albums, OSTs and remixes, audio books, more popular Sony Music artists working in games etc.) or expanding to toys, model kits/figurines, board games, books, comics, apparel, etc
IRCC Shuhei was the one who played a gameplay demo of project eve and wanted the game on Playstation and went to bat for it to get a publishing and xdev support deal. The guy has good taste in video games and actually plays them as well. Bloodborne and Demon Souls were major projects that he backed previously before he shifted to the indie side.
Yes, but he also greenlighted and handled turds like Knack, Knack 2 or Destruction All Stars to name a few. Projects that on paper, in the pitch may have sounded good, but when under development they should have been highly improved or maybe even cancelled.
