Sony Intends to ‘Aggressively’ Invest in First-Party Studios Alongside Partnering With External Studios

Following the publication of its financial results today, Sony Corporation has revealed that it plans to strengthen its video game software offering by “aggressively” investing in its first-party studios alongside strengthening external partnerships.

Speaking to investors in a conference call (transcript via Video Games Chronicle), CFO Hiroki Totoki said that the company will “increase development personnel and other in-house costs by approximately 20 billion yen [$183m] year-on-year, as we further strengthen our in-house software.”

“To enhance our software offering, we intend to continue investing in partnering with external studios, in addition to aggressively investing in our in-house studios,” Totoki added. “As I just mentioned, we aim to strengthen the PlayStation platform through actions such as the recently announced partnership with Haven Entertainment, which was established by Jade Raymond, creator of the famous game Assassin’s Creed. In our additional investment of Epic Games, along with the rest of the Sony group we will also work to enhance the social and platform capabilities of games.”

Sony’s approach is in stark contrast to Microsoft’s. While the company has said that it’ll continue to look into mergers and acquisitions where it makes sense, its main goal is to strengthen in-house development capabilities.

SIE CEO Jim Ryan previously said that PlayStation’s lineup is “the fruit of not massive spending sprees, but of very, very steadily, carefully planned organic growth.” “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,” Ryan told Games Industry last October.

[Source: VGC]

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