Sony insists quality of first-party games would suffer if they launched day one in new PS Plus
"We feel like we are in a good virtuous cycle with the studios."
Sony insists the quality of its first-party games would suffer if they launched day one in the new PS Plus.
Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Sony exec Jim Ryan confirmed first party games won't launch into the newly announced subscription, unlike Microsoft's approach with Xbox Game Pass.
"We feel like we are in a good virtuous cycle with the studios," he said, "where the investment delivers success, which enables yet more investment, which delivers yet more success. We like that cycle and we think our gamers like that cycle."
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He continued: "[In terms of] putting our own games into this service, or any of our services, upon their release... as you well know, this is not a road that we've gone down in the past. And it's not a road that we're going to go down with this new service.
"We feel if we were to do that with the games that we make at PlayStation Studios, that virtuous cycle will be broken. The level of investment that we need to make in our studios would not be possible, and we think the knock-on effect on the quality of the games that we make would not be something that gamers want."
That's not to say it couldn't happen in future, however. Ryan points to the success of PlayStation Studios games releasing on PC as an example of change.
"[We've had] great critical success and great commercial success, and everybody has made their peace with that happening and is completely at ease with it. I look back four years and think nobody would have seen that coming," he said.
"So I don't want to cast anything in stone at this stage. All I'm talking to today is the approach we're taking in the short term. The way our publishing model works right now, it doesn't make any sense. But things can change very quickly in this industry, as we all know."
Sony's approach differs to that of Microsoft, where new games are added to Game Pass on day one.
Phil Spencer has recently stated, though, that there's strength in "diversity of business models" and retail remains "an important part" of the company's profit and loss.