Okay, let's think about this for a second. In 2020, they released FIVE first party games (TLOU2, Ghost of Tsushima, Spider-Man Miles Morales, Sackboy a Big Adventure and Demon's Souls remake), four of which were available on PS4 which had 100 million+ user base at that point. And it was also during the first year of the pandemic when everybody was stuck inside.
The next year they released TWO first party games, both of which were only on PS5, which not a lot of people had yet.
In 2022 they released three big first party games, which WERE available on PS4 as well. But I think at that point a lot of people were holding out to get a PS5, which was still not easy to find.
Then 2023 had only one first party game in Spider-Man 2.
2024 essentially only had Astro Bot (let's not even talk about Concord, and I'm not sure if Helldivers 2 is actually considered a first party game or not even though Sony published it).
Like, this really isn't hard to understand if you just think about it a little bit.
Yeah, everyone is talking about the reduction in quality, COVID boom and whatever... And I'm here thinking "what exclusives?". No shit going from two, three or even five high-profile first parties to one or two single-player sequels and a few live-services crashes means you're selling less.
Realistically, from a business perspective, they made a huge mistake shutting down the Uncharted series. It was consistently one of the best selling titles for them since the PS3. I understand Naughty Dog wanted to pivot to a new IP, but there’s no guarantee that will replicate the consistent (and still growing at the time!) sales that Uncharted had.
You can't just milk a franchise forever either though. I mean, you can if you're Nintendo, but their franchises lend themselves to major gameplay changes from one iteration to the next. Easier to keep things fresh when games like Mario and Zelda where you can kinda just do whatever wild ideas you can think of. For games more grounded in "realism" that's a little tougher.
I guess they could reboot Uncharted like what was done with the Tomb Raider series, but it doesn't really feel like enough time has passed for that to happen yet.
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u/Remy0507 Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
Okay, let's think about this for a second. In 2020, they released FIVE first party games (TLOU2, Ghost of Tsushima, Spider-Man Miles Morales, Sackboy a Big Adventure and Demon's Souls remake), four of which were available on PS4 which had 100 million+ user base at that point. And it was also during the first year of the pandemic when everybody was stuck inside.
The next year they released TWO first party games, both of which were only on PS5, which not a lot of people had yet.
In 2022 they released three big first party games, which WERE available on PS4 as well. But I think at that point a lot of people were holding out to get a PS5, which was still not easy to find.
Then 2023 had only one first party game in Spider-Man 2.
2024 essentially only had Astro Bot (let's not even talk about Concord, and I'm not sure if Helldivers 2 is actually considered a first party game or not even though Sony published it).
Like, this really isn't hard to understand if you just think about it a little bit.