A recap, led by the new branding that will be an umbrella brand that will be used for all the first-party studios.

Sony Interactive Entertainment announced PlayStation Studios. It’s essentially the same thing as we see at Microsoft with Xbox Game Studios: under this name, we can find all their internal studios. This idea will launch late this year, at the same time as the PlayStation 5 will, and only those games will have this brand that will be developed/managed by Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE onwards). There will also be studios that will be hired by Sony to complete their vision. The PlayStation Studios animation can be found below – it has characters from several franchises (Uncharted, Horizon Zero Dawn, Ratchet & Clank, God of War, The Last of Us, LittleBigPlanet).

„We are excited about this. Over the last few years—and even the last decade—the strength of the titles coming out from our studios has been stronger than ever. We have been thinking about how we unite all of these great games under one brand, and the purpose of that is to make the consumer understand that, when they see this brand, they’re getting ready for a robust, innovative, deep experience that they’ve come to expect from games coming from PlayStation. So we came up with PlayStation Studios.

You’ve seen the animated asset that will exist primarily during the beginning of our titles, but the brand will exist in a lot of different places. Different, shorter animations will exist in trailers… It will exist in advertising. It will be in any other creative assets, such as the game packaging and the game discs themselves. We think this is a good way to let consumers know that, if they see it, then the quality games they’ve come to expect from us are here. And this brand will exist for well-known existing franchises, as well as brand new franchises that we have yet to explore,” Eric Lempel, SIE’s senior vice president and global head of marketing, told Gamesindustry.

He added that some PlayStation 4 titles will also use this branding, but The Last of Us Part II and Ghost of Tsushima won’t (neither will the PC port of Horizon Zero Dawn). „The cinematic you’ve seen is the one that has multiple games in it, but over time, as we introduce well-established franchises, we can tailor that opening a bit to possibly show the franchise over the years, new characters that have come into play… There’s a lot we can do that we’re excited about,” Lempel added.

Sony published its financial earnings report for the last quarter of the previous fiscal year (January-March 2020). In this period, a total of 1.5 million PlayStation 4 units were shipped, which is 1.1 million down year-on-year. With this result, the PS4 reached 110.4 million shipped units, and they also surpassed its forecast of 13.5 million units for the previous fiscal year by 0.1 million. However, they did not provide any PS4 forecast for the current fiscal year. Interesting.

A few more numbers: in one year, PlayStation Plus gained 5.1 million subscribers – it now has 41.5 million. In the previous quarter, 59.6 million games were sold (4.9 million up year-on-year), with a significant shift towards digital (PlayStation Store) sales from 45 to 66% compared to last year. This, however, was mostly due to the coronavirus. The PlayStation Store offers a comfortable and safe way to get the games we want.

We also read on the PlayStation Blog that the next State of Play will happen on May 14, at 1 PM PT (4 PM ET, 9 PM UK, 10 PM CET) on YouTube and Twitch, focusing exclusively on Sucker Punch’ upcoming PlayStation 4-exclusive Ghost of Tsushima. The 18-minute broadcast will offer more gameplay with exploration, combat, and more, and there will be no PlayStation 5-related news. This game launches exclusively on PS4 on July 17.

There is a job listing on a Japanese recruitment site called Rikunabi, where the description is the following: „You will handle the prototyping and purchasing of PlayStation hardware products. Choose the optimal suppliers from domestic and overseas partners, cooperate with the design and quality assurance departments on specification adjustments and production capacity for hardware parts, and build up the October 2020-due PlayStation 5.”

Regarding this job listing, an SIE representative told Famitsu that the October launch window for the PlayStation 5 mentioned in the job listing is not true and that the console comes this Holiday season.

Still, Sony will soon have to talk about the PlayStation 5‘s launch date.

Source: Gematsu, Gematsu, Gematsu, Gematsu

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