Sony Interactive Entertainment will not release “any new major existing franchise titles” before March 31, 2025

gematsu.com:

Sony Interactive Entertainment does not plan to release “any new major existing franchise titles next fiscal year,” which ends on March 31, 2025, the company said during its fiscal year 2023 Q3 earnings briefing.

“Regarding first-party software, we aim to continue to focus on producing high-quality works and developing live service games,” Sony Group president, chief operating officer, and chief financial officer Hiroki Totoki said. “But while major projects are currently under development, we do not plan to release any new major existing franchise titles next fiscal year (Editor’s Note: begins April 1, 2024 and ends March 31, 2025) like God of War Ragnarok and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.”

It should be noted that while “major existing franchise titles” includes intellectual property such as God of War and Marvel’s Spider-Man, it does not include new intellectual property like Concord or non-major existing franchise titles like Until Dawn.

Totoki continued, “Although the burden of acquisition related costs will ease next fiscal year, we expect profit from first-party software to decrease slightly from this fiscal year due to the impact of the decrease in sales. Due to this, operating income for the next fiscal year is currently expected to increase slightly from this fiscal year. However, while this our baseline, we are reviewing measures for further improvement in profitability in advance of the annual forecast results announcement this May.”

Totoki also discussed the company’s future outlook for PlayStation 5 hardware sales during the next fiscal year.

“Regarding the PlayStation 5 hardware, which will enter its fifth year since launch, partially due to its entering the latter half of the console cycle, we aim to optimize sales with a greater emphasis on balance with profits, so we anticipate a gradual decline in unit sales from next fiscal year onwards,” Totoki said. “We expect third-party software sales to continue to expand gradually due to the expansion of the