PlayStation won’t release any major first-party games before March 2025

PlayStation won’t release any major first-party games before March 2025

Sony won’t release any big, first-party, exclusive PlayStation 5 games in any of its existing franchises this year — or before the end of its next financial year in March 2025, the company admitted in its latest financial report.

“Regarding first-party software, we aim to continue to focus on producing high-quality works and developing live service games, but, while major projects are currently under development, we do not plan to release any new major existing franchise titles next fiscal year like God of War Ragnarök and Marvelʼs Spider-Man,” said Sony president, COO and CFO Hiroki Totoki. (You can view the full presentation transcript here; Totoki’s comments are on pages 6 and 7.)

Sony has been quiet about its post-Spider-Man 2 slate, and Totoki’s statement confirms suspicions that PS5 was facing a long gap in exclusives in its schedule, similar to that experienced by Xbox in 2022. Insomniac’s Wolverine game, for example, is known to be a long way off, with a recent hack revealing its projected release date to be 2026. Naughty Dog’s next project is unknown, while its The Last of Us multiplayer game has been scrapped.

For 2024, Sony is leaning on third-party publishers and developers to make up the shortfall. This month will see the release of Square Enix’s Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth as a PlayStation 5 exclusive, while Sony has snapped up console exclusivity for Konami’s Silent Hill 2 remake for later in the year. A recent State of Play focused on these and other exclusive games from outside studios, including Rise of the Ronin and Stellar Blade.

Splashy, first-party exclusives like the Horizon and God of War games are PlayStation’s stock-in-trade, so how come Sony is facing such a long gap between such releases? It could be for any number of reasons — simple bad scheduling luck, or the delayed effects of the production slowdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Totoki, who will replace Jim Ryan as interim CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment when Ryan leaves on April 1, seems to have an opinion on the culprit. On an investor call about the latest financial results, Totoki hinted that he felt PlayStation’s in-house studios could be better run when it comes to their business plans and development schedules.

“People who work in the studios have very high motivation. They’re very highly motivated, they’re very good people, and they have great creative minds and knowledge of live streaming,” Totoki said through a translator, as reported by VGC. “However, having said that, when it comes to the business, I think there is room for improvement. And that’s to do with how to use money, the schedule of development and how to fulfil one’s accountability towards development — those are my frank impressions. I will continue to engage in dialogue with the people so that we can find the right way to proceed.”

Regardless of the reason for it, a gap in big first-party games will have an impact on the PlayStation business. PlayStation is having an enormously successful year: The gaming division reported a record quarter in terms of revenue, and PlayStation Network hit an amazing 123 million monthly active users. But Sony has lowered its aggressive forecast for PS5 sales in this financial year from 25 to 21 million units. And Totoki said he expected “a gradual decline” in PS5 sales starting in Sony’s next fiscal year, “partially due to entering the latter half of the console cycle.”

Totoki struck a notably cautious tone in these financial results, compared to the habitually bullish Ryan. It seems even Sony is not immune to the gloom surrounding the game industry at the moment. Could some belt-tightening, and maybe even layoffs, hit PlayStation studios in the near future? We’ll find out after Totoki assumes control on April 1.