Sony's third-party plan to make PlayStation the best place to play

gamesindustry.biz:

As Sony Interactive Entertainment's head of third-party portfolio and acquisitions, Shawne Benson is in a good position to trace the platform holder's evolving strategies when it comes to – in her words – "making PlayStation the best place to play."

Benson has been with Sony in a portfolio role since early 2017, and took over her current title in 2021. Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz ahead of this month's DICE Summit, Benson says she's seen a significant change in what her role entails as part of the larger PlayStation strategy, in part due to where the company has been in the console generation lifecycle.

"In the time that I joined, and I was watching my predecessor manage the team, he was really focused on driving value for the masses in our PS4 audience, and also really focused on PSVR. And a lot of the partnerships were really about driving engagement on the platform, so the types of games we brought would tell that 'breadth and depth' story and also showcase some of the innovations on PS4.

"Since then there have been other people who have taken that role and I've seen the evolution within that time frame, and the shift really focused and moved over to content acquisitions from a future technologies perspective. So we were really focused in trying to drive a lot of excitement around the launch of PS5 and making PS5 be the best place to play. A lot of the content we would focus on evolved based off of that."

Different business models and kinds of games coming to market have also changed the way Sony thinks about partnerships.

"In the past we would look at things that were closer to release because they were known quantities and so forth," Benson says. "The way I lead my team now is a lot more future-thinking and