2022 will go down in history as a strong year for PlayStation. Sony has met with impressive success with its PlayStation 5 console, and even now, more than two years after its launch, the enormous machine is almost impossible to get hold of. Waiting lists, black markets and shattered hopes and dreams characterize the lives of many a PlayStation fan. of all, one wants a PlayStation 5.
The PlayStation 5 sells, in short, like hoeing dung. If it appears in a shop, you can be sure that it will disappear before long, torn from the shelves by greedy vultures, and you have to be quick on the trigger if you want to secure one.
The PlayStation 5 is still a huge success.
Sony
The situation is a combination of impressive and sad. Impressive that people buy faster than Sony is able to produce, but quite sad when you see that Sony is unable to stabilize the situation. There are many reasons for that, and Sony is probably doing what they can, but the fact that we still can’t just walk into a store and pick up a machine is sad.
Nevertheless, Sony is a horse’s head ahead of Microsoft. They are climbing closer and closer to 25 million consoles sold, while Microsoft is still a long way from 20. That Microsoft has been able to sell more consoles than Sony in some months is most likely because one console is available, the other is not.
A powerful game year
That Sony is doing well should not be a surprise. PlayStation can boast of high brand loyalty, and 2022 has been marked by many big games that demonstrate Sony’s strengths. Recently we got the impressive God of War sequel Ragnarök, and earlier this year we got Horizon: Forbidden West, Gran Turismo 7, an upgraded version of The Last of Us, as well as the experimental and curious cat game Stray.
They have delivered the goods, in style. The sales figures on the game front have been high, the response enormous, and in addition they have seriously directed their focus towards something for which they quite tap out the audience; PC gamers.
It has been a couple of years since Sony first pushed one of its games over to PC, but in 2022 more big titles have appeared there than in any previous year. Spider-Man, God of War, Uncharted and Sackboy are no longer PlayStation-exclusive, but can now also be played on PC.
The downside is that these PC versions come out long after their console releases. This year we got, for example, God of War from 2018 on PC, but we know nothing about or when Ragnarök will get the same treatment. The same applies to Horizon: Forbidden West, and strictly speaking it’s too bad. I can understand that this is an experiment for Sony, but the sales numbers on PC are good, and it is a bit strange compared to Microsoft, which launches all its games on both console and PC at the same time.
New subscriptions
Is PlayStation Plus Premium worth the investment?
Sony
2022 was not just a year for big, beautiful and impressive games. It was also the year that Sony expanded its PlayStatoin Plus subscription to three different levels. Now you can choose a subscription model based on how keen a player you are, and if I’m being completely honest, there’s little here that convinces me to go all in.
Because let’s look at what PlayStation Plus offers compared to its closest competitor Game Pass.
Both PS+ and Game Pass offer new and old games via download or streaming. Here the services are quite similar, but a big difference comes through how the two platforms handle completely new games, as well as games from older platforms. Microsoft gives you a choice. You can subscribe to Game Pass, or you can buy and download for free and own, regardless of what platform the game originally came on.
Sony runs a different twist. If you want to play, for example, the old classic ICO, you must first subscribe to PS+, you cannot buy it for free. With few exceptions, you have to subscribe to play, and that’s a terribly bad solution. I would like to have some classics for my own sake. I want to be able to play them at any time, and there is no practical reason why it has to be this way. Only Sony has decided to take a Nintendo and be rude to its customers.
They are also good at offering something of particularly high value in their subscriptions. Where Microsoft allows you to get all of the new big games included in your subscription, Sony is not as jovial. They allow you to get big games, but only when they have been on the market for quite a while. The consolation prize is trial versions of a handful of games where you can never be sure that you will find something you like. If trial versions of new games are to be a draw, they must offer more than the bundle of games they currently offer.
Strictly speaking, the whole scheme appears to be a somewhat hasty and poorly thought-out reaction to the enormous success Microsoft had with Game Pass in 2021. But as we can see, it is content that counts. Although Game Pass is still doing well, the curve has stagnated and Microsoft is not taking in new subscribers at the same pace as last year. Does Sony need to jump on a trend, or would they have done well to take a little more time to set out the right course?
Halfway solutions are rarely the ideal solution, and PlayStation Plus in 2022 appears somewhat halfway. This is in rather stark contrast to the fantastic quality of the games Sony has delivered.
Sony bought Bungie
Destiny developer Bungie has found a new home at Sony.
Bungie
Early this year, Sony was proud to announce that it had acquired the Halo and Destiny studio Bungie. This came as a minor shock in the gaming industry. Bungie is, after all, the game that almost single-handedly gave Microsoft great success at the launch of the Xbox. Halo is the game that was synonymous with the new box, and is still among the most identifiable Xbox series.
Bungie eventually broke away from Microsoft, only to ally with Acitvision Blizzard. That alliance came to an end, only for Microsoft to jump in a bit later and set in motion an acquisition of Activision Blizzard that has not yet been approved, and the last word on the show is now that Bungie has found a new home at Sony.
The acquisition came to a value of an almost staggering NOK 32 billion. An interesting detail of this acquisition is that Bungie will be independent even though they are part of the PlayStation Studios umbrella. Destiny 2 will continue to be available on several platforms, and future expansions will also be available.
What direction this will take in the future is hard to say, but it is certainly an interesting twist when major console manufacturers start to sniff more at releasing games on more than just their own platform.
It is precisely a development that will be interesting to follow in 2023. Sony is already pushing harder to deliver on PC, and it will be interesting to see if they deliver even better in the coming year. In any case, we know it will be a good year for games. Both Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Final Fantasy XVI and Spider-Man 2 are expected next year, and exclusively on PlayStation 5.
Furthermore, Sony will offer a couple of new hard packs next year. They finally come up with their answer to Microsoft’s Elite controller, and launch the DualSense Edge in January. A month later PSVR 2 finally arrives. These VR glasses promise both 4K and HDR, which should make virtual adventures much easier to get lost in.
More important than this, however, is that Sony will hopefully finally be able to meet demand, and produce enough consoles in 2023.
