There is a very simple explanation why Sony Interactive Entertainment is betting heavily on single player experiences and that explanation is in the players.
According to documents obtained from VICE, single player games are vibrating and PlayStation gamers spend more time on these types of experiences than playing multiplayer games, which encourages Sony to bet on these games.
In 2019, Sony’s Jim Ryan said that the company would never face the cinematic single-player games that leave the community in awe and that they kept betting on games like God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn or Marvel’s Spider-Man.
The explanation is in the players, who continue to show interest, the last example being Ghost of Tsushima that sold more than 5 million units in 3 months and shows how much the PlayStation player embraces this type of experience.
The documents VICE had access to, are not shared due to the watermark that the source would reveal, Sony begins by saying that “everyone knows that the individual player is dying” and shows how the focus is on games like Black Ops 3 or GTA 5, but on the next page it states that, in fact, “the individual player is thriving” and that PlayStation players spend more time playing offline than online.
This is the basis for one of the most important new features on PS5, the activities and easy access to different segments of the game, so you can immediately focus on the objective in mind.
This is because Sony highlighted some issues gamers have with single player games. Not knowing how long they will need to finish a campaign, the time they spend looking for help when they don’t know what to do, the uncertainty about seeking help and avoiding spoilers, and still spending a lot of time between sessions and forgetting what they were doing.
In view of the prosperity of single player games, Sony worked to help the gamer with these issues and it shows on PS5.
