PlayStation: Third-Party Exclusives Are More About Technologies and Innovation That Make ‘PS5 Sing’

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William D’Angelo
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Sony Interactive Entertainment head of third-party portfolio and acquisitions Shawne Benson in an interview with GamesIndustry discussed its third-party exclusives and acquisitions, as well as the company’s strategies for exclusives.

“There’s room for exclusives where it makes sense, obviously, but really the focus – especially with a digital distribution model that is more prevalent than in generations past – is that there are different types of gameplay out there,” said Benson. “For example, a free-to-play game’s business model is most successful when it’s on as many platforms as possible and brings the biggest audience possible.”

She added, “So that’s thinking about it less around exclusivity than what kind of technologies could they adopt that really make PS5 sing. What kind of innovation can they apply with the haptics in the DualSense or the adaptive triggers? What could they do with 3D audio in the sound design of a game, etc? So there’s a lot of things we could do and then create marketing stories around, and that’s where some of these partnerships for multiplatform games really focus.”

Benson did reveal Sony doesn’t play for developers to use the DualSense Features, but if they think “it’s a good PlayStation story” they will work on a partnership.

Sony’s third-party strategy over the next three to five years includes the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation VR2.

“We definitely are still in this ‘raising tide helps all ships’ mindsets for the VR ecosystem, so it’s not the same kind of competitive landscape as it is, say, in the console space, kind of ‘flat’ gaming experience,” said Benson.

She added, “[In the original PSVR launch window], it was still trying to sell the promise of why to develop for VR. Now we have this community of much more seasoned creators – teams like Polyarc, NDreams and so forth that are dedicated studios to the VR space. I think both sides, Meta and PlayStation, have really put a lot of investment into these studios to make sure we still can tell that story from a technology perspective, because there’s still a lot of belief in that experience.

“It’s around how we can best support you to be able to bring that content over to PSVR2, and that can be development funding support to marketing support because a lot of these studios don’t necessarily have the same kind of marketing infrastructure as a bigger publisher would. And if you look at the two platforms, they’re very different experiences and they all kind of have their own space for it.”

Sony is looking at how they can best support its partners and platforms and says PC is not in the same competitive space.

“When we look at partnerships, we’re looking at how we can support both the partner and the platform,” Benson said. “Our mindset is we want to make sure the partner can keep the lights on and generate revenue in other channels.

“And from my perspective, it’s really important for gamers to have choice and variety of opportunities in places to play, and PC is really not in the same kind of competitive space for us, at least currently. So it’s not really a thing we focus on when we look at partnerships. If you look at a lot of our indie partners, that’s a great opportunity for generating revenue on their side, and our side as well.”

Benson said smaller developers are “the lifeblood to our platform. I certainly have a lot of personal attachment to it. If I’m not even wearing a Sony hat, that’s my community. Those are the people I was born and raised in the game industry with. I have a huge affinity for that and it’s what got me into the game industry in the first place.

“From a content strategy standpoint, it is absolutely a priority for us. The AAA obviously has a lot of commercial return and value, and the indie games also offer innovation and things that influence AAA down the line because they take more risks and there are more types of mechanics they incorporate.”

A life-long and avid gamer, William D’Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.

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