Will the PlayStation 4 keep getting new games, or will it suffer through the dreaded software drought that inflicts most video game consoles during their first few months on the market? Sony is hoping — and promising — the former.
Sony’s got big plans for their next PlayStation, which comes out on Friday. They want to keep pumping it full of big-budget games, indies, and everything in between. But a glance at their release schedule for the next few months must be disconcerting for anyone who has the shiny new console preordered with the expectation that they’ll be playing it non-stop. After the launch lineup — Knack, Killzone, and a bunch of multiplatform games like Assassin’s Creed IV and Battlefield 4 — there isn’t much out there.
Particularly in January, February, and March, the list is dismal.
But Sony’s Adam Boyes says that more games are coming in the next few months — the company just hasn’t given us dates. Boyes, who is in charge of working with third-party publishers and developers to get their games on PlayStation consoles, says they don’t plan to let the PS4 have any sort of software drought.
“I think we’ve got a lot of stuff that’s gonna be coming out sort of on a more regular cadence than the competition, because we’ve got a lot of great, phenomenal indie games,” Boyes told me during an interview yesterday in NYC. “I think also what you’re gonna see is a lot of updates to the free-to-play games as they come online. We’ve got Warframe; we’ve got Blacklight: Retribution; we’ve got DC Universe Online. Then we’ve got Warthunder coming. And all those games I think we’ll be continually adding and evolving the content that’s available on them. And then once some of the other indie games start coming online, once they start releasing, we’ll see a nice cadence.”
Remember that massive list of indie games? The one that includes titles like Fez and The Binding of Isaac? Those might be the titles that help fill in the blanks between launch and the next big AAA games, like Infamous: Second Son, The Order: 1866, and whatever big productions Sony hasn’t announced just yet.
“Up until about December, I think there’s a lot of visibility on what’s coming up, and I think January, February, March is when you’ll start seeing all that stuff start hitting the market at a nice, regular beat,” Boyes said. “Like every few weeks there will be new stuff to be playing on PS4.”
It’s also Boyes’ job to snag the Sony exclusives you see for multi-platform games like Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. That whole “60 minutes of exclusive PlayStation content” thing? Boyes and his team. The bad news for people who want to play games only on Xbox and Wii U is that Boyes and crew are fighting hard to keep that going — they’ve already snagged some sort of exclusive content for Bungie’s upcoming shooter Destiny, for example, which will be announced tomorrow night during Spike TV’s PS4 All-Access event.
“We’re having meetings — that’s what my team does every single week,” Boyes said. “Right now we’re planning E3; we’re planning our announcements for that; we’re planning Gamescom; we’re planning TGS; all those different events and what kind of stuff we want. And listening, whether people are tweeting at [Sony top exec Shuhei Yoshida] or me or anyone on my team. We’re reading all the forums and commenters to see what people are really excited about. And that’s the stuff we usually start with — the more excitement there is around certain content, that’s sort of where we go after.”
They talk to the big third-party publishers — the EAs and Activisions. They talk to independent development studios like Gearbox, whose AAA shooter Borderlands 2 is getting a Vita port next year. Boyes and his team even talk to the developers behind successful Kickstarters, hoping to sway them to release their games on the PlayStation Network for either Vita, PlayStation 4, or both.
That’s why Boyes is confident that the PS4 games are just going to keep trickling in — even if many of them are ports. And although Sony doesn’t have any big-budget third-party exclusives on the same level as EA’s Titanfall, the multiplayer shooter that will be only on PC and Xbox platforms, they’re continuing to fight for platform exclusives that they hope PlayStation fans can care about. For PS4 owners, hopefully that means enough games to keep everyone’s console in use for the next few months.
“I think next year is gonna be a huge year though in general, with Destiny coming and a lot of stuff we saw and talked about on that partnership which is gonna be super-exciting,” Boyes said. “There’s a lot of stuff we continue to focus on trying to get.”
Comments
19 responses to “Sony Promises There Won’t Be A PS4 Game Drought”
How about fixing the console drought in Australia first.
How does one preclude the other? I’m sure the PS4 factories are probably churning out consoles around the clock. How does investing in more production facilities and paying for worker overtime affect the upcoming game line-up?
Yup foxconn got quite a few schools shut down and the students bussed in to screw circuit boards to cases and such in the last month or two in china.
I don’t see the link between the hardware manufacturers and software developers. Different companies mate.
I wonder if anyone tried to activate a PS4 brought in from US, in Australia and how they went with it.
I’m not entirely sure that he’s using the word cadence properly. I think he just learnt it and wanted to use it twice in an interview
Cadence is usually used for rhythm or a flow brought about through use of rhythm. It’s a weird word to use in context, but it fits what he’s trying to say.
Games coming at regular, repeating intervals with no weird bunching up or gaps. That’s cadence, I suppose.
Cadence is absolutely used that way in that context in software development, talking about regular and consistent release cycles.
They use “architecture” as a synonym for hardware, I doubt they care what things actually mean at this point.
I think sony will dominate xbox with exclusives this gen.
localriot… that is so goddamn optimistic
Xbox One Exclusives
Ryse, TitanFall, Halo5, Dead Rising3, Forza5… should i keep going?
PS4 Exclusives
Killzone… hahahaha…. hahahahah, Knack?, Flower… hahaha cute
what happened to having Metal Gear and Kingdom Hearts? 🙂
Not at launch but over time. Sony have more studios working on games. MS have to basicly bribe people for exclusives.
Titanfall is on pc.
Localriot…. you do know PC is dominated by Microsoft? -cough- Windows -cough-
Personally I HOPE both the ps4 and x1 exclusives are around equal in number by the end of the gen, that they both sell 200mill consoles and that every gamer also gets access to a decent pc.
I THINK x1 starts ok and the ps4 is pretty avg, but overall they will level out as they did this gen.
I think the PC will have more exclusives than all 3 consoles.
I think that it will suffer a dive after Christmas, all consoles do. The 360&PS3 did. As the Wii U is going through one now. There will be software bugs and updates to fix issues, ect. For anyone to think that it is going to be all big hitters and no stop sales, think again. After the Christmas rush the breaks will come on.
This is no surprise. It’d be nice to have a constant stream of new content, but realistically, it won’t happen. Releasing indies and ports will help, and will target those who haven’t played them on PC or XBLA (Fez, for example), and that’s all well and good – but any promising AAA titles will have been pushed to the launch lineup, or delayed to within the dreaded (and oh-so-ambiguous) “launch window”.
Once the console finds its rhythm I’m sure a release pace will develop, but there’s no point in hoping for a steady stream of top-tier games right from the get-go.
It’s never happened before and it won’t happen now. Lets just hope the drought doesn’t last as long as the Wii U’s, which has, so far this year, had about three worthwhile games come out for it.
Lucky I didn’t bother getting bf4 or cod yet. Gives me plenty to play on the One along with dead rising 3 and nba 2k14 until watch dogs.
I guess that depends on developers
Those delays may actually turn out to be a bit of a blessing in disguise. Games like Watch Dogs and Driveclub can slot into that post-launch drought period when there might not otherwise have been much coming out.
Sorry, but indie games are nice and all, but don’t try and cover up a games drought with them. They are extra nice to haves, but shouldn’t be relied upon.