PlayStation 1st Party Software Woes…

Sony's first-party game sales have been trending downward for years, and honestly, I'm not surprised.

Stephen Totilo recently compiled Sony's own sales data, and the trend is pretty striking:

Yes, FY2020 was an anomaly because of COVID, when people were spending significantly more time at home. But even accounting for that, the overall trajectory is clearly headed downward.

And that's the part I find interesting.

Sony Has a Software Problem

Sony still sells millions of PlayStation consoles. Its individual games can still be massive hits. God of War, Spider-Man, The Last of Us, Astro Bot and others have demonstrated that Sony can still make successful games.

The problem is how few of them we're getting.

The PS5 generation has been defined by increasingly long development cycles and, an even bigger reason, Sony’s push toward live-service games. Sony spent heavily acquiring studios and investing in multiplayer projects, but that strategy hasn't translated into a sustained increase in first-party software sales.

Meanwhile, some of Sony's biggest studios have gone years without releasing a major new game.

Naughty Dog is a perfect example.

Sony has an enormous PlayStation install base. But you can't sell games that aren't being released.

Sony Needs More Games

That's ultimately what I think these numbers are telling us.

Sony doesn't necessarily have a hardware problem. It has a first-party output problem. Remakes and remasters can help, and major releases like Wolverine will certainly move the needle. But Sony needs more than a handful of blockbuster releases spread across an entire generation. It needs more games, more variety, and more consistent output.

The PlayStation of the PS1 through PS3 era was built on an incredible diversity of first-party experiences.

Today's Sony feels much more one-track-minded, particularly with its fixation on live-service gaming.