Sony's made up for a less than impressive first-party showing in 2015 by partnering with third-party publishers, and the strategy's worked a treat. This month alone the platform holder's threatening to run away with the holidays, thanks to exclusive PlayStation 4 bundles for Call of Duty: Black Ops III and Star Wars Battlefront. But what about 2016?
Even if we anticipate the odd delay, the Japanese giant's amassing an outstanding lineup of first-party content for the coming months, with Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, The Last Guardian, and Horizon: Zero Dawn all part of the roster. But according to SCEE boss Jim Ryan, it'll be doubling down on third-party partnerships, too. In other words, it's going to be another year of domination from the firm.
"We're going to be strong with games that we have developed and we will publish, but third-party partnerships will continue to be important to us," he told MCV. "The days of a platform holder working in isolation are long-gone. It's a connected ecosystem and relationships with publishers operate on many levels – they will certainly continue to be really important in 2016."
We can probably safely assume that the PlayStation maker will extend its relationship with Activision, with the next Destiny and Call of Duty likely to factor into its plans. As for other potential third-party partners? We could see it getting into bed with Rockstar should the inevitable Red Dead Redemption sequel ever gallop into view. In fact, that would just about wrap up a stellar year for Sony, wouldn't it?
[source mcvuk.com]
Comments 11
One of my big PSX predictions will be Destiny 2 announced, coming September 2016.
@adf86 Too early, but Destiny 2 will definitely be September 2016, agreed.
@Bad-MuthaAdebisi Still think Fallout 4 will probably do better on PS4. RPG fans seem to be playing on PlayStation - but we'll see, I suppose.
@get2sammyb I don't know when the best time is to announce it, E3 is too far along, GDC is not really the place for announcements and Activision won't want the marketing for Destiny 2 and next year's CoD to clash. If Sony have marketing again they will want to talk about it as much as possible, hence my PSX prediction.
@get2sammyb Well now rpg AND shooter fans are playing on ps4, so they should easily sell more copies of fallout. Plus the whole twice as many consoles in the wild thing doesn't hurt.
I really doubt Destiny 2 will be next year. I know some think it will be, but I think that's a little to soon. Maybe one or two more DLC packs first.
Oh almost forgot, I really really want to either play a remastered Red Dead Redemption or a brand new, real bad actually.
Of course Sony is going to try to keep as many third party partners in its back pocket as possible. As much as I've liked Gran Turismo (at least the first 3), MLB The Show, Ratchet & Clank, Twisted, Syphon Filter, Jak & Daxter, Resistance, Killzone, Uncharted, Gravity Rush, inFamous and Sly Cooper among others such as Dark Cloud. The PlayStation has always been the house that third parties built. Those other games certainly didn't hurt but what made the PS brand were franchises like Tekken, Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid and especially Final Fantasy. Once FF VII came out, the PSone took off. I always wonder, had it been an N64 game, what would've happened.
@Gamer83 you forgot Ridge Racer and PES! But your totally right - I have never thought as much of the ps first party games as its competition. Crackdown beats infamous, Mario smashes Jak and Daxter, Halo annihilates Killzone and Mario Kart beats Twisted. But ff7, Tekken and Resi are a class all of their own.
@JoeBlogs True, it's definitely not been as awful as people make out. Next year will be much better, though.
This year didn't turn out too bad on the exclusives because Until Dawn was far better than it ever had any business being.
@themcnoisy
I'd agree with most of those, except I think inFamous tops Crackdown. I prefer Forza over Gran Turismo at this point, however, and GT Sport doesn't appear it will do anything to make me change my mind.
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