The PlayStation 5 has been an unqualified success in terms of sales, but there’s been some, shall we say, spirited debate about the system’s early software lineup. Is Sony delivering enough big games fast enough? Should big games like Horizon Forbidden West and Gran Turismo 7 be crossgen? Everyone’s got an opinion, but in a new interview with Axios’ Stephen Totilo, PlayStation Studios boss Jim Ryan seemed confident Sony was delivering a better early lineup on PS5 than they did on PS4.
Yes, the output during the PS4 cycle was excellent, but the great majority of those games came in the second half of the cycle. We made a conscious effort to improve on that this time around, and what you’ve seen thus far shows that we’ve certainly made progress. In just a few months since the launch of PS5, we have released incredible games and have so much more in the pipeline.
And developers are really just getting started taking advantage of the technology in PS5. I can’t wait to see what PlayStation Studios and our third-party partners create for PS5. If games like Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Returnal, and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart are examples of what you can achieve in the first six months of PS5, imagine what we will see in year two or three.
Well, it’s easy enough to make the comparison – within roughly its first year, the PS4’s lineup included Killzone: Shadow Fall, Knack, InFamous Second Son, Driveclub, and The Last of Us Remastered, all of which were PS4 exclusives. Meanwhile, PS5 will get Demon’s Souls, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, Returnal, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, and (hopefully) Horizon Forbidden West. I’ll let you decide which system has the better lineup.
Elsewhere in the Axios interview, Ryan seemed to indirectly address the recent spending spree of their rivals Microsoft as well as reports Sony is starting to become more conservative about what they’ll greenlight, saying successful development is a matter of creative freedom, not “throwing money at it”…
Nurturing creative talent is not as simple as throwing money at it. You also must give them the freedom to be creative, to take risks and come up with new ideas. Just look at Ghost of Tsushima from Sucker Punch. That was not the game we thought they were going to make, but we are not overly rigid or corporate with our talent. We want them to use our hardware as their creative palette.
What are your thoughts on how the PS5 library is shaping up so far? Do you think it will end up with the more “creative” lineup when all is said and done?