The Playstation 5 has had a very successful launch, despite the constant stock shortages issues that have been plaguing both the PS5 and Xbox Series X. But, naturally there has been a lot of discussions surrounding the console’s launch lineup of games.
Playstation Studio boss Jim Ryan has spoken on this in a new interview with Axios’ Stephen Totilo, and unsurprisingly he is very confident that the PS5 is delivering a stronger lineup of games early in the console’s lifecycle compared to the 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.”
The Playstation 4 didn’t have the strongest launch games, but there were certainly highlights such as Infamous: Second Son and The Last of Us Remastered. Of course, which one has the better library of game releases within it’s first year is very personal, and we will have to wait until the end of the year to fully compare the two consoles.
Another thing that Jim touched on was definitely a veiled jab on Microsoft, who have been very aggressive when it comes to purchasing game studios and console exclusivity.
“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.”
It goes without saying that the two companies have very very different strategies for how they will approach this console generation. While of course “just throwing money at it” isn’t always the answer, given that the Xbox One kind of became a bit of a meme because of it’s lack of exclusives, it’s not exactly a surprise that Microsoft want to make sure they have plenty of exclusives to offer gamers.
But, Sony clearly feel confident enough to not answer this with their own spree of spending, so we will have to wait and see which next gen console ends up on top of the “most exclusive games in the first year” tierlist.
