S.T.A.G.E. said:
They said it towards the end of last gen. Things might have changed, but I remember that. Sony was bleeding financially and they were reported by 2011 to have made more of an investment comparable to nintnedo or Microsoft in new ip investments. When you are winning generations it's not harder but rather easier to convince third party to work more closely with you. Look how it worked out for Microsoft last gen. Sure their first party wasn't on fire but they got a lot of third party support more easily. Sony makes so many games anyway that it wouldn't be as easy to notice the cutbacks as it would to be Microsof anyway. |
I'm guessing the decrease in first party focus had to do with the fact that Sony more or less only had 3 super big exclusives in the PS3 era : God of War 3(4.8 physical), The Uncharted Series(6-6.7 physical) , and Little Big Planet(5.82 physical). That's not to say games like Infamous or Killzone weren't big, they were, but they were more so there to boost the Playstation 3's lackluster catalog in 2009. They did their jobs, but they weren't Uncharted, and definitely weren't Xbox or Nintendo level games. Despite this they had pretty big budgets, especially Killzone 2, my god. Consider that games like Nier, Persona 5, or Nioh sell almost as much as those games ... and it's no wonder that they focused on first party less. Thankfully the direction they're going is to do more different and creative endeavors and it's paying off, Horizon is on track to sell around 4 million physically by early August. The game will probably sell around 5-5.5 mil by the end of the year, truly great.
