Sony CFO claims that it lacks original IPs ahead of Concord's closure

by Danny Craig  · 
Sony CFO claims that it lacks original IPs ahead of Concord's closure
Sony

Sony's chief financial officer, Hiroki Totoki, has stated that the company does not have enough original game, film, or anime franchises that it has "fostered from the beginning," which it believes is an issue.

The details:

  • Totoki told the Financial Times that Sony as a whole is currently "lacking the early phase (of IP)" and that this has become an issue for the company as it aims to compete with its rivals. The executive was referring not only to PlayStation's gaming catalog, but also to Sony's anime and films, claiming that the company is better at attracting audiences for existing properties.

  • As expected, PlayStation fans were shocked by Totoki's comments, citing multiple examples of first-party franchises that have not received new entries in years, including Resistance, Sly Cooper, Killzone, and Jak and Daxter. Others acknowledged that the CFO was referring to all of Sony's media and agreed with the comment when it came to its film division. “As a casual viewer I couldn’t name anything that stands out to me from their film division that isn’t an existing IP, and even what they are making doesn’t have the greatest reputation,” one Reddit user wrote. “What is Sony Pictures without Spider-Man? Hotel Transylvania?“

  • The interview comes just one day after it was announced that Firewalk Studios' Concord would be taken offline after only two weeks on sale. The game, which had been in development for eight years, failed to reach 1,000 concurrent players at launch and was believed to have sold fewer than 25,000 units. Many people criticized Sony for allowing a live-service game in a dying genre to remain in development for so long, accusing the company of wasting its resources.

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