Since 2020 up until the end of the last financial year, Sony has been struggling to sell first-party games. There has been a steady decline, even with some major releases like God of War: Ragnarök, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, and Astro Bot, as many gamers continue to feel like the PS5 generation has lacked in releases.
The data, collated by Game File, showcases proof of a lot of what audiences have already been feeling for years. It's interesting to note, though, that Sony has seen an uptick towards the end of the most recent financial year, hot off the heels of Ghost of Yotei's release. 2020's financial year saw the release of Ghost of Yotei's predecessor, Ghost of Tsushima, as well as The Last of Us: Part II, but even compared to the years before then, most of Sony's first-party sales have been in steady decline in the 2020s.
It's easy to point at a flop like Concord, or a game that didn't quite make the massive impression Sony wanted it to like Marathon and say they're the sole reason behind this pattern, but that seems too simple. Sony has built its ecosystem around one or two major first-party releases a year. It has all its eggs in one or two baskets, and so that means that if those games don't sell, we see more figures like the years between 2021 and 2024. Even with recent remakes, remasters, and more, Sony still can't show growth in its first-party titles consistently. Here's hoping this trend can change for the better, but even if millions of consoles are sold year after year, people need games to play on them.