Sony has made some changes to its business plans, according to a brand-new annual report that the company has filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. As caught by Game File’s Stephen Totilo, the changes in Sony’s business plans indicate that the company might be bracing itself for shrinking revenue in the current market. Along with this, the company has also removed mentions of bringing its first-party titles to PC.
As Totilo notes, last year’s annual report noted that PlayStation “aims to achieve sustainable and profitable business growth.” In its newer iteration, however, the line has been changed to: “aims to achieve sustainable business growth.” The fact that mentions of profitability got removed indicates the current spike in component prices will also start affecting PlayStation more adversely.
“In hardware, although Sony expects to be affected by the impact of increased prices and supply shortages of memory semiconductors, it plans to manage the impact on profitability by flexibly adjusting plans for, among other things, unit sales and promotions.”
In the meantime, the company wants to raise its service-based revenue from PlayStation Plus, likely in the hopes of compensating for the slimmer margins it is getting on PlayStation hardware.
As for bringing its games to more platforms, the company has said in its report last year that it “plans to continue its efforts to deploy its first-party titles to multiple platforms such as PC.” This line has been removed altogether in the newer report, which falls in line with recent rumors indicating that Sony just hasn’t been seeing the profit and growth from the PC market that it has been hoping for.
More recently, PlayStation CEO Hideaki Nishino essentially confirmed that the company won’t bring more of its single-player first-party games to PC. He said that release plans come down to the “characteristics of each title,” and that live-service games with online aspects will continue to be considered for a PC release to ensure a wider audience. Single-player first-party games, however, will stay on PlayStation hardware moving forward.
“Regardless of the platform, we will make decisions based on the principle of delivering the best possible gaming experience that maximizes each title’s unique features,” he said.
As for other noteworthy parts of Sony’s new annual report, the company also plans to make use of more AI-based tools for game development. “Sony is utilizing AI to unleash the creativity of studios and further enhance the PlayStation experience,” reads a new addition to the report.
“Within the studio business, Sony aims to improve productivity through the use of AI-powered tools, allowing development teams to reinvest their time into building richer worlds and gameplay experiences. In the platform business, Sony is working to leverage AI to route transactions more efficiently, and to personalize and recommend content for individual users in the PlayStation Store. Sony also aims to push visual fidelity forward and deliver higher quality gameplay experiences through continued investments in AI and machine learning.”
Sony also wants to continue expanding its cross-media efforts by working to “create films and television shows based on PlayStation game IP in order to further expand the reach and monetization of its IP.”
