Sony Clarifies the Difference Between First-Party, Second-Party, and So On 1
Image: Push Square

There’s been a raging debate about the meaning of first-party, second-party, and so on among gaming enthusiasts for eons.

For the longest time, it was assumed first-party games were those published by the platform holder and made by internally owned studios, while second-party titles were those titles still published by the platform holder but made by non-owned studios.

However, over the past decade or so, Sony has befuddled over-engaged fans by describing the likes of Death Stranding as first-party games.

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So, what gives?

Well, in an interview with Sacred Symbols+ (paywalled), ex-PS Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida mostly put to bed the debate with a full breakdown.

“So, when games are made by a developer, [even an] independent developer, and published by PlayStation, we call them first-party games.”

He explained: “For example, before Housemarque was acquired they [were an] external developer and our external producers managed relations. But we funded the game and released the game as first-party, even though it was externally developed.”

Yoshida continued: “We call second-party when an independent company created the game and funded it or joint funded it, so the IP is still owned by that company. A recent example is Rise of the Ronin by Koei Tecmo. PlayStation published that game so we call it second-party.”

He concluded: “And then third-party exclusives we call partner titles, so some games like Final Fantasy 16 came out on PlayStation first and that was a third-party exclusive, so that’s the terminology.”

Yoshida added that during his tenure as PS Studios boss, he signed a lot of externally developed first-party games, although he acknowledged that second-party deals have been becoming more prolific of late.

“We always did lots of externally developed first-party when I was doing management, and PlayStation is still doing it, but the output from what we call second-party has definitely increased over the last few years,” he noted.

“I remember the first example was Nioh and Nioh 2. Those games were created and published by Koei Tecmo in Japan and Asia, but outside Asia in the US and Europe, they were published by PlayStation and that was a second-party deal in our terminology. That went very well.”

So, while it is still quite complicated, that should give a little more insight into how Sony sees the terminology. We’d summarise it like this:

First-party
A game published and fully funded by Sony. Usually owns the IP.
Second-party
A game published by Sony with partial or full funding coming from an external company. Usually doesn't own the IP.
Partner title
A game published and developed by an external company launching first or earlier on PlayStation platforms.
Third-party
A game published and fully funded by an external company.

It all gets a bit complicated, and you can see how there may be some exceptions to the rules where different contracts are in place. (For example, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is a game published and fully funded by PlayStation, but it doesn’t own the IP, so it sits somewhere between first-party and second-party really.)

Nevertheless, it’s quite interesting hearing Yoshida lay all this out, and it gives us a better framework to work with moving forwards.

[source patreon.com]