In an interview with CNET, PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan has discussed plans for the next generation games in the making at Sony, and of course tailored for the incoming PS5. Good enough, the platform owner and publisher doesn’t even think about leaving the story-based genre that was so appreciated over the course of the gen.
In an interview with CNET, PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan has discussed plans for the next generation games in the making at Sony, and of course, tailored for the incoming PS5. Good enough, the platform owner and publisher doesn’t even think about leaving the story-based genre that many appreciated from the current generation.
“We’ve never had greater success with our own narrative-driven, story-based games than we’re having right now. We feel good about that, and it’s certainly not a genre of gaming we’ll ever walk away from,” Ryan said, reassuring things that the core business of the console won’t be any different next gen.
With Death Stranding coming in November, The Last of Us Part II and Ghost of Tsushima still to have fixed release dates, it looks like PlayStation 4 has still plenty to deliver for the next couple years under that label.
He also mentioned service games and claims that this genre has both good and bad things, making an example of FIFA as one of the most prominent success cases around in the segment, but also admitting that it’s “not easy” to enter it and make good.
“If you’re going to do this, you have to do it well. It’s a form of entertainment that has to be built incrementally; you can’t sort of plunge in and build one of these live service games and get it right from Day 1. It’s got to be evolved and iterated, and it’s not easy. It’s not easy.”
On top of that, Ryan remarked previous comments about the cross-gen support that Sony intends to implement over the next couple years, as the company doesn’t want to leave anyone behind and plans on leaving people free to play with their friends no matter they’re going to play on a PS4 or a PS5 console.
“Whether it’s backwards compatibility or the possibility of cross generational play, we’ll be able to transition that community to next-gen,” Ryan said. “It won’t be a binary choice about whether you have to be either on PlayStation 4 or next-gen to continue your friendship.”
We should hear more on PlayStation 5 around the end of the year and the first half of 2020, so don’t hold your breath for anything relatively soon.
