Jubenhimer
Member
Sony's PlayStation brand was built on developers, not just ones owned by Sony, but also those of third party publishers, dating all the way back to the original PlayStation. Some of the industry's biggest names, Tomb Raider, Metal Gear Solid, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater were all made famous by PlayStation. Even today, Sony continues to receive top-tier support from third parties big and small.
That said, developers won't just blindly support PlayStation, and there have been times when Sony struggled with securing third party support. The PlayStation 3's early years are best left forgotten, as the system was initially plagued with crappy versions of games that ran better on the much less powerful Xbox 360, and many of the best third party games early in the generation such as Dead Rising and Bioshock being made 360 and PC exclusive, with PS3 versions often coming late or not at all. Then there's the PlayStation Vita, which while started off strong, was largely ignored by most everyone except a small following of indie developers.
Let's say at any moment, third parties decide to abandon the PlayStation 5 en mass, with all the big AAA, mid-range, and indie titles going to Xbox and Nintendo Switch, and it was up to Sony and its PlayStation Studios to prop up the console. Could Sony theoretically survive with just its own titles? Of course, if you asked this in the PlayStation 2 days, you'd be laughed out of the room, but these days? It's debatable.
Sony has always had good first party support, but it wasn't until the PS2 generation where they began taking it more seriously (SCE published games were moreso complimentary in the PS1 era). It officially became the top priority for Sony with the initial PS3 struggles, as the initial lack of third party support drove them to use its own games to prove the worth of the console. Now with the PS4 and PS5, SIE published titles have become one of the biggest selling points of PlayStation.
PlayStation Studios itself, is quite a large production house. 17 worldwide development teams, internal and external development, and a total staff count in the thousands. Combined with strong sales, critical acclaim, and many GotY wins and nominations. Even without third party support, PlayStation would still have fantastic games. The main thing Sony would need to keep in mind in this scenario would be pace of releases and motivation of its studios. If Sony were to support a console effectively on their own, they would need to have a release for it almost every month in order to avoid lengthy software droughts some Nintendo consoles have suffered from. They would also need a large variety of titles releasing for it. During the PS3 days, Sony threw anything and everything at the wall not only to try and incubate new PlayStation characters, but also to help disguise the lack of variety from third parties on the system compared to its predecessors at first. Today, while Sony still has varied titles, most of its output consists of a smaller selection of AAA third person action games that push the capabilities of the hardware, leaving any blank spots open to other publishers. But without third party support, Sony is going to need to produce a larger number of varied titles, while securing whatever publishing deals with third parties they could manage.
The biggest thing Sony would need to do, is to rally all of its teams behind the system. A large part of the reason the PS Vita failed was because Sony didn't do enough to get most of its studios to believe in it. Naughty Dog, Sucker Punch, Santa Monica Studio, Gurella proper, none of these teams made anything for Vita, at least not internally. As such, it was up to Sony's lower tier teams such as Bend Studio, Media Molecule, Big Big, Gurella Cambridge, XDev and JAPAN Studio to prop up PS Vita, and while all these devs made some cult hits, most of them weren't exactly known for system sellers, and even they abandoned the system after the first year as a result. In this case, it at least made sense, PlayStation 4 was Sony's top priority at the time, and thus it eventually became WWS' top priority as well. But if a big home console is struggling to meet expectations, the Sony needs to effectively direct its teams to support it as much as they can. This was how Nintendo was able to salvage consoles like the equally struggling Nintendo 3DS early on. When third party wasn't as strong as it should've been, Nintendo rallied its EAD and SPD divisions behind it to ensure the system had a steady stream of varied and high quality releases that demonstrated its unique features. Sony would need to do the same in a scenario like this, rallying all of PS Studios to release as many games as possible, at the highest quality possible to showcase the unique features of the hardware. They were able to do it in the early PS3 days, and I think they could easily do the same with a theoretical third party-less PlayStation console.
That said, developers won't just blindly support PlayStation, and there have been times when Sony struggled with securing third party support. The PlayStation 3's early years are best left forgotten, as the system was initially plagued with crappy versions of games that ran better on the much less powerful Xbox 360, and many of the best third party games early in the generation such as Dead Rising and Bioshock being made 360 and PC exclusive, with PS3 versions often coming late or not at all. Then there's the PlayStation Vita, which while started off strong, was largely ignored by most everyone except a small following of indie developers.
Let's say at any moment, third parties decide to abandon the PlayStation 5 en mass, with all the big AAA, mid-range, and indie titles going to Xbox and Nintendo Switch, and it was up to Sony and its PlayStation Studios to prop up the console. Could Sony theoretically survive with just its own titles? Of course, if you asked this in the PlayStation 2 days, you'd be laughed out of the room, but these days? It's debatable.
Sony has always had good first party support, but it wasn't until the PS2 generation where they began taking it more seriously (SCE published games were moreso complimentary in the PS1 era). It officially became the top priority for Sony with the initial PS3 struggles, as the initial lack of third party support drove them to use its own games to prove the worth of the console. Now with the PS4 and PS5, SIE published titles have become one of the biggest selling points of PlayStation.
PlayStation Studios itself, is quite a large production house. 17 worldwide development teams, internal and external development, and a total staff count in the thousands. Combined with strong sales, critical acclaim, and many GotY wins and nominations. Even without third party support, PlayStation would still have fantastic games. The main thing Sony would need to keep in mind in this scenario would be pace of releases and motivation of its studios. If Sony were to support a console effectively on their own, they would need to have a release for it almost every month in order to avoid lengthy software droughts some Nintendo consoles have suffered from. They would also need a large variety of titles releasing for it. During the PS3 days, Sony threw anything and everything at the wall not only to try and incubate new PlayStation characters, but also to help disguise the lack of variety from third parties on the system compared to its predecessors at first. Today, while Sony still has varied titles, most of its output consists of a smaller selection of AAA third person action games that push the capabilities of the hardware, leaving any blank spots open to other publishers. But without third party support, Sony is going to need to produce a larger number of varied titles, while securing whatever publishing deals with third parties they could manage.
The biggest thing Sony would need to do, is to rally all of its teams behind the system. A large part of the reason the PS Vita failed was because Sony didn't do enough to get most of its studios to believe in it. Naughty Dog, Sucker Punch, Santa Monica Studio, Gurella proper, none of these teams made anything for Vita, at least not internally. As such, it was up to Sony's lower tier teams such as Bend Studio, Media Molecule, Big Big, Gurella Cambridge, XDev and JAPAN Studio to prop up PS Vita, and while all these devs made some cult hits, most of them weren't exactly known for system sellers, and even they abandoned the system after the first year as a result. In this case, it at least made sense, PlayStation 4 was Sony's top priority at the time, and thus it eventually became WWS' top priority as well. But if a big home console is struggling to meet expectations, the Sony needs to effectively direct its teams to support it as much as they can. This was how Nintendo was able to salvage consoles like the equally struggling Nintendo 3DS early on. When third party wasn't as strong as it should've been, Nintendo rallied its EAD and SPD divisions behind it to ensure the system had a steady stream of varied and high quality releases that demonstrated its unique features. Sony would need to do the same in a scenario like this, rallying all of PS Studios to release as many games as possible, at the highest quality possible to showcase the unique features of the hardware. They were able to do it in the early PS3 days, and I think they could easily do the same with a theoretical third party-less PlayStation console.
