PlayStation boss Jim Ryan needs to create a better narrative - VentureBeat

Some PlayStation fans are feeling angsty about the company’s strategy under Sony Interactive Entertainment boss Jim Ryan.

And that means it is less exciting to fixate on those blunders — especially when the company is so often going on the attack with major acquisitions and disruptive business models like Game Pass.

And that means when the company doubles down on those same strengths, it is easy for fans and industry observers to take the company’s achievements for granted.

Sony is making conservative choices under Ryan, and that could have real consequences.

To be fair to Sony and Ryan, the company seems laser-focused on the games PlayStation fans are most excited about.

But the new wrinkle in the strategy is that Sony is emphasizing these massive blockbusters to the exclusion of almost everything else.

At the start of the PlayStation 4, Sony embraced indies as a way to fill out the consoles release schedule while the company developed its own projects.

“There was a time and a place, in the early stages of the life of PS4, to make statements [using indie games],” Ryan said in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz in 2017.

Of course, those games will continue coming to PlayStation without direct support from Sony.

And while Ryan was still overseeing PlayStation in Europe, the company also closed Guerrilla Cambridge and Evolutions Studios.

But it is notable at Sony because the shift comes while Sony also seems less determined to deliver features that fans want.

To that point, Sony recently announced it is closing the digital stores for the PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation Vita.

Again, Sony is making these decisions to preserve profitability, but it’s also something that a company might decide to do “For the Players” even if it were losing money.

Ryan believes that Sony must make every PlayStation game an event.

And part of that means not associating the PlayStation brand with smaller games that might diminish the public perception of the value of a PS5 release.

But it also means that Sony doesn’t need to do things for the players because the players will be so hungry to do things to get PlayStation.

Sony is making bigger bets on fewer games.

That makes this a conservative strategy in the short run, but it’s one that could go sideways on PlayStation and Ryan.

PlayStation does make some of the most beloved games, and the company has even started tying them together with a Marvel Studios-style logo animation.