If Nintendo’s strength is in focusing on mechanically perfect games with great local and party multiplayer potential, and Microsoft’s is apparently games as a service, what is Sony’s core strength? What is their philosophy as they design their games?
Shawn Layden, the head of PlayStation in North America, was recently asked this question during a conversation with The Telegraph. His response? Sony excels in making story and character focused games.
“My philosophy is to play to my strengths,” he said. “And if you look at the studios we have – Naughty Dog, Guerrilla, Santa Monica Studios, Japan Studios – that’s what we do well. We do story. We create characters. I was so gratified to see the response to [Horizon Zero Dawn protagonist] Aloy when she showed up on the screen and the crowd went wild.
“Those are the kind of things we do well. It’s what we’re known for. It really speaks to our entertainment DNA. We wish to entertain. We wish to make you happy. We wish to make you cry. That whole range of emotions we can pluck at to make you have a great experience.”
He did go on to say that in the future, if Sony saw a way to enter the games as a service realm if they felt they had a team and a concept that suited the space well, they would do it- but for now, they are very clearly happy playing to their strengths. And it’s good for us that they do, because that’s how we get stuff like The Last of Us.