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Sony's Shawn Layden believes in quality over quantity for games

SIE Worldwide Studios' chairman has said that Sony's in a position of strength to deliver fewer games that are hitting "all the beats that we want to."
Ben Kerry 12 February 2019

Sony already has a lot of big names under their belt, with the likes of God of War and Spider-Man releasing last year and The Last of Us: Part II and Days Gone still left to look forward to, and in a recent interview with CNET, Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios chairman Shawn Layden has said that Sony can afford to delay big game releases for the sake of overall quality.

"I think we've done a lot over the last three or four years to get us to a place right now where we're building fewer games per year than ever before, but we're spending more time, more energy, certainly more money, on making them. So we're striking on all the beats that we want to, and we're getting both critical and commercial acclaim."

Sony's strategy is to try and make a big splash when they release a title from one of their first-party development studios, which is resulting in less quantity overall but higher quality releases. This might explain why Sony isn't attending E3 in 2019, as they don't have any big announcements to make prior to revealing the rumoured PlayStation 5, which might even be revealed at a separate event in the middle of the year.

Layden goes on to further discuss Sony's strategy in managing events and releasing games, and how they go about acquiring and tasking their studios to create the greatest games they can. He was also asked about the popularity of the battle royale genre, to which he said:

"I don't want to get into me-too. I think the world's got all the battle royale it needs right now."

Which big PlayStation titles are you looking forward to?

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