Sony ready to 'attack' in holiday season with PS5, executive says
New hardware and stable supply leave company poised to meet lofty sales goal
asia.nikkei.com
The Sony Group arm aims to sell 25 million units of the PS5 in the fiscal year ending March 2024, its highest-ever target for a PlayStation console, despite having sold just 8.2 million in the first fiscal half.
With Sony finally overcoming the semiconductor shortages that made the PS5 so hard to find in recent years, Nikkei asked Hideaki Nishino, SIE's senior vice president in charge of platform experience, about the console's ecosystem and plans for the holiday season.
Edited excerpts from the interview follow.
Q: In November, Sony released a new PS5 model with increased storage capacity, as well as the PlayStation Portal, a hand-held remote player for the PS5. Why are these devices being released now?
A: Typically, the life cycle of game consoles is said to be seven to eight years. The PS5 was released in November 2020 and is now in its third year, putting it in the middle of that cycle.
Because it generally takes three to five years to develop a game title, we're starting to see an increase in the number of games that take full advantage of the PS5's features.
We will attack in the year-end sales season with both content and hardware, including peripherals
Q: Until recently, the PS5 had seen severe supply constraints stemming from semiconductor shortages and logistics disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
A: There are approximately 2,000 parts in a PlayStation, and if even one semiconductor is missing, it cannot be manufactured.
Some parts are procured from one company, while others are procured from multiple companies. We are now purchasing from multiple companies wherever possible in order to diversify risks.
The supply shortage has been resolved, and this winter can be said to be the first year-end sales season since its release in which you won't have to search for a PS5. We aim to sell the PS5 at a faster pace than the PS4.
Q: What are some examples of games that take advantage of the PS5's features?
A: The PS5 is equipped with a solid-state drive and other high-speed technologies, making it faster to load data and start up. You don't have the wait time with "now loading" while data is being read, so we're not wasting gamers' time.
For example, in Marvel's Spider-Man 2, released in October, the player can roam around a re-creation of New York City. There is no lost time due to loading, allowing players to go wherever they want, whenever they want.
More than 2.5 million copies were sold in the first 24 hours after release, making it the fastest-selling game produced by SIE's PlayStation Studios ever.
Games that have a large map and allow you to freely move around the world are well-suited to the PS5.
Q: The PS5 is a dedicated home console, but as Microsoft's recent acquisition of Activision Blizzard shows, the industry is moving toward PC gaming and mobile games.
A: If you want to play PC games with the same GPU [graphics processing unit] performance and so forth as the PS5, you have to spend money and time to build your own PC. While doing so can be rewarding, a dedicated console allows any player to enjoy games of the same technical level right out of the box.
Also, one of the strengths of the Sony group is adapting game titles like Gran Turismo into TV dramas and movies.
It's important that people who don't play games have access to our content, and we hope to use movies and dramas as an opportunity to make people want to try PlayStation games. The Last of Us series' sales increased when the live-action-drama version was airing.
