New console, expected during 2020 holidays, will feature sharper graphics and well-known games to help separate from rivals
By
Takashi Mochizuki
June 29, 2019 5:30 am ET
TOKYO— Sony Corp.’s next-generation PlayStation is still more than a year away, but its marketing strategy against newcomers like Google is already clear: Focus on hard-core gamers who obsess over the latest features.
Sony Chief Executive Kenichiro Yoshida has even called the PlayStation a niche product, aimed at serious players. “Details when making games have become more important than ever,” he said at a recent company strategy briefing. The company talked up the specs of the next PlayStation such as “ray tracing,” which is used for optical effects such as showing the play of light on characters’ faces when they move about a candlelit room.
Once a side project for the Tokyo electronics maker, the PlayStation has become Sony’s flagship consumer product. In the most recent fiscal year, the PlayStation unit, including services like videogame subscriptions, led Sony units with more than $21 billion in revenue and nearly $3 billion in operating profit.
That is why the still-unnamed fifth-generation PlayStation, which analysts expect to be ready by the holiday season of 2020, is central to the company’s outlook.
The PlayStation 5—or whatever Sony chooses to call it—won’t have the field to itself. Alphabet Inc.’s Google is pitching a new service called Stadia starting in November, while Apple Inc. plans a new videogame service in the fall called Apple Arcade. Stadia focuses on games that can be streamed from the cloud and don’t require expensive new hardware.Microsoft Corp. already has announced a holiday 2020 date for its next-generation Xbox.
Sony sees Microsoft as its main competitor in the next generation, with Google a potential threat in the mid- to long-term as internet technology advances, one company official said.Nintendo Co. isn’t perceived as a major rival, the person said, because its main users tend to be younger than PlayStation’s core demographic.
PlayStation has been one of the most successful mass-market products of the past quarter-century; the PlayStation 4 alone is expected to pass 100 million units this year. Sony’s latest thinking puts less stress on overall sales numbers and more on the most-profitable segment of the market: the devoted fans who buy big-budget titles, such as Bethesda Softworks LLC’s “Fallout” series andTake-Two Interactive Software Inc.’s“Red Dead Redemption.”
A second Sony official said the company believes people buy a videogame console to play graphics-heavy games.
The strategy partly resembles that of Hollywood studios—including Sony’s own Sony Pictures—which have tried to counteract the flood of free video entertainment available on the internet with a handful of blockbuster franchises such as “Spider-Man.”
Sony is concentrating its attention on large software publishers as it gets ready for the next PlayStation, according to executives at Sony and software makers. In general, publishers want their games on multiple platforms to maximize sales, while console makers look to make deals for exclusive content or an initial period of exclusive sales.
Some executives at smaller game makers say they have felt snubbed by Sony, in contrast to Nintendo. At the Tokyo Game Show in September, Nintendo is supporting events to showcase independent game developers. Sony used to do the same, but isn’t planning to this year, the first Sony official said.
Sony still welcomes games from independent studios, the first Sony official said, but the emphasis is on strengthening relationships with large publishers since resources are limited. The thinking is, the official said, that people buy a console to play high-quality games available only on that platform, not smaller games also available on smartphones.
Google has said its cloud-based Stadia service will go beyond the boundaries of traditional consoles. Speaking to game developers in March, Majd Bakar, Stadia’s vice president of engineering, said: “You’re used to being forced to tone down your creative ambitions that are limited by the hardware. But our vision with Stadia is that the processing resources available will scale up to match your imagination.”
Sony says a high-powered machine in the home will still be necessary to run the latest graphics stably because cloud services rely on sometimes-balky internet connections. The next PlayStation will be capable of processing 8K ultra-high-definition graphics, said the PlayStation unit’s chief, Jim Ryan, in May.
Mr. Yoshida, the Sony CEO, described the fifth-generation PlayStation as “dramatically increasing the graphics-rendering speed” and said the change “clearly demonstrates why it makes sense to have a next-generation console.”
Sony is also looking to make more big-budget games at its in-house software studios, which already produce exclusive PlayStation games.
Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at Ace Research Institute, said he believes Sony’s stress on large-budget games could lessen variety and lead some customers to switch to rivals such as Nintendo. In contrast, the second Sony official said he expected smaller games would still be released for the PlayStation, even without extensive Sony support, because the popularity of PlayStation makes the platform hard for smaller game developers to ignore.
Sony Positions Next PlayStation for Hard-Core Gamers
By
Takashi Mochizuki
June 29, 2019 5:30 am ET
TOKYO— Sony Corp.’s next-generation PlayStation is still more than a year away, but its marketing strategy against newcomers like Google is already clear: Focus on hard-core gamers who obsess over the latest features.
Sony Chief Executive Kenichiro Yoshida has even called the PlayStation a niche product, aimed at serious players. “Details when making games have become more important than ever,” he said at a recent company strategy briefing. The company talked up the specs of the next PlayStation such as “ray tracing,” which is used for optical effects such as showing the play of light on characters’ faces when they move about a candlelit room.
Once a side project for the Tokyo electronics maker, the PlayStation has become Sony’s flagship consumer product. In the most recent fiscal year, the PlayStation unit, including services like videogame subscriptions, led Sony units with more than $21 billion in revenue and nearly $3 billion in operating profit.
That is why the still-unnamed fifth-generation PlayStation, which analysts expect to be ready by the holiday season of 2020, is central to the company’s outlook.
The PlayStation 5—or whatever Sony chooses to call it—won’t have the field to itself. Alphabet Inc.’s Google is pitching a new service called Stadia starting in November, while Apple Inc. plans a new videogame service in the fall called Apple Arcade. Stadia focuses on games that can be streamed from the cloud and don’t require expensive new hardware.Microsoft Corp. already has announced a holiday 2020 date for its next-generation Xbox.
Sony sees Microsoft as its main competitor in the next generation, with Google a potential threat in the mid- to long-term as internet technology advances, one company official said.Nintendo Co. isn’t perceived as a major rival, the person said, because its main users tend to be younger than PlayStation’s core demographic.
PlayStation has been one of the most successful mass-market products of the past quarter-century; the PlayStation 4 alone is expected to pass 100 million units this year. Sony’s latest thinking puts less stress on overall sales numbers and more on the most-profitable segment of the market: the devoted fans who buy big-budget titles, such as Bethesda Softworks LLC’s “Fallout” series andTake-Two Interactive Software Inc.’s“Red Dead Redemption.”
A second Sony official said the company believes people buy a videogame console to play graphics-heavy games.
The strategy partly resembles that of Hollywood studios—including Sony’s own Sony Pictures—which have tried to counteract the flood of free video entertainment available on the internet with a handful of blockbuster franchises such as “Spider-Man.”
Sony is concentrating its attention on large software publishers as it gets ready for the next PlayStation, according to executives at Sony and software makers. In general, publishers want their games on multiple platforms to maximize sales, while console makers look to make deals for exclusive content or an initial period of exclusive sales.
Some executives at smaller game makers say they have felt snubbed by Sony, in contrast to Nintendo. At the Tokyo Game Show in September, Nintendo is supporting events to showcase independent game developers. Sony used to do the same, but isn’t planning to this year, the first Sony official said.
Sony still welcomes games from independent studios, the first Sony official said, but the emphasis is on strengthening relationships with large publishers since resources are limited. The thinking is, the official said, that people buy a console to play high-quality games available only on that platform, not smaller games also available on smartphones.
Google has said its cloud-based Stadia service will go beyond the boundaries of traditional consoles. Speaking to game developers in March, Majd Bakar, Stadia’s vice president of engineering, said: “You’re used to being forced to tone down your creative ambitions that are limited by the hardware. But our vision with Stadia is that the processing resources available will scale up to match your imagination.”
Sony says a high-powered machine in the home will still be necessary to run the latest graphics stably because cloud services rely on sometimes-balky internet connections. The next PlayStation will be capable of processing 8K ultra-high-definition graphics, said the PlayStation unit’s chief, Jim Ryan, in May.
Mr. Yoshida, the Sony CEO, described the fifth-generation PlayStation as “dramatically increasing the graphics-rendering speed” and said the change “clearly demonstrates why it makes sense to have a next-generation console.”
Sony is also looking to make more big-budget games at its in-house software studios, which already produce exclusive PlayStation games.
Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at Ace Research Institute, said he believes Sony’s stress on large-budget games could lessen variety and lead some customers to switch to rivals such as Nintendo. In contrast, the second Sony official said he expected smaller games would still be released for the PlayStation, even without extensive Sony support, because the popularity of PlayStation makes the platform hard for smaller game developers to ignore.
Sony Positions Next PlayStation for Hard-Core Gamers
fukking hilarious!!!
we're right around the corner...
You gotta be cool... We don't know what Sony been working on ever since they released the specs for PS5
Also we haven't seen ANY new tech demos YET since sony skipped out on E3 this year...
Angry birds players? Solitaire? Just make this shyt fast , graphics decent with higher resolution and affordable. Foh
