Sony Clarifies the Difference Between First-Party, Second-Party, and So On | Push Square

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There’s been a raging debate about the meaning of first-party, second-party, and so on among gaming enthusiasts for eons.

For the longest time, it was assumed first-party games were those published by the platform holder and made by internally owned studios, while second-party titles were those titles still published by the platform holder but made by non-owned studios.

However, over the past decade or so, Sony has befuddled over-engaged fans by describing the likes of Death Stranding as first-party games.

So, what gives?

Well, in an interview with Sacred Symbols+ (paywalled), ex-PS Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida mostly put to bed the debate with a full breakdown.

“So, when games are made by a developer, [even an] independent developer, and published by PlayStation, we call them first-party games.”

He explained: “For example, before Housemarque was acquired they [were an] external developer and our external producers managed relations. But we funded the game and released the game as first-party, even though it was externally developed.”

Yoshida continued: “We call second-party when an independent company created the game and funded it or joint funded it, so the IP is still owned by that company. A recent example is Rise of the Ronin by Koei Tecmo. PlayStation published that game so we call it second-party.”

He concluded: “And then third-party exclusives we call partner titles, so some games like Final Fantasy 16 came out on PlayStation first and that was a third-party exclusive, so that’s the terminology.”

Yoshida added that during his tenure as PS Studios boss, he signed a lot of externally developed first-party games, although he acknowledged that second-party deals have been becoming more prolific of late.

“We always did lots of externally developed first-party when I was doing management, and PlayStation is still doing it, but the output from what we call second-party has definitely increased over the last few years,” he noted.

“I remember the first example was