Playstation CEO Jim Ryan said people don’t widely appreciate how they “organically” grown their studios, rather than via “massive spending sprees.”
In an interview, Jim Ryan iterated how valuable it is to grow your first-party studios’ capability significantly.
He says so in stark contrast to Microsoft, who recently acquired Zenimax Media. The complete Zenimax portfolio included eight studios right out of the gate.
Playstation took time to grow its studios
Playstation’s strategy of creating exclusives started in the early years of the Playstation 3. As the then-fledgling Xbox was beginning to outpace Sony, the company had to do something. Their answer to it was first-party exclusives.
Since then, Sony acquired as many as 14 studios under their belt so far. Their latest acquisition was Insomniac Games, who developed Ratchet and Clank and Spider-Man.
“It’s probably not widely appreciated or understood, to what extent that we have grown our own game development capability organically over the course of this generation,” he said to GamesIndustry.biz. “Obviously, it’s been helped by the acquisition of Insomniac, and it’s wonderful to have them as part of the family.”
“I would just invite anybody to look at the launch window line-up of the PS4 generation, or PS3 generation, and compare it to what we are going to bring in the equivalent phase of PS5. There’s just no comparison.”
So far, the exclusives that Playstation 5 will have are decent, to say the least. These include Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, Spider-Man Remastered, and Demon’s Souls.
Ryan proud of their “steadily, carefully planned organic growth”
Jim Ryan is quick to deride Microsoft’s method of acquiring studios. While it is essential to have a good line of first-party studios, it matters more than the studios are mature. Beyond being home-grown, they need to have a reliable portfolio.
Even then, Ryan believes that “massive spending sprees” don’t have the same value as careful, organic growth.
“That is the fruit of not massive spending sprees, but of very, very steadily, carefully planned organic growth,” noted Ryan. “Probably the best example I give… I could obviously talk about Naughty Dog, but they’ve always been making great games. But let’s talk about Ghost of Tsushima, which has been a critical delight and certainly a commercial delight to an extent that we didn’t think it would be. That speaks volumes to the work that Sucker Punch has done to build on their previous canon of work.”
Microsoft pushed for aggressive growth in their first-party studios, shocking the entire gaming industry.
The past three years were nothing but growth for them, but the fans are yet to see if Jim Ryan is right.
Featured image courtesy of Playstation/YouTube Screenshot