Sony First-Party Game Sales Saw Steady Decline the Last 5 Years - IGN Daily Fix

[00:00] What's up everybody? Damon here, and for today's Daily Fix We Have, PlayStation is struggling to sell its first-party games, and Fallout 76 is getting its long-awaited current-gen upgrade. This is your Daily Fix.

[00:21] Presented by Universal Orlando Resort and its newest theme park, Universal Epic Universe. New data has revealed a steady decline in first-party PlayStation game sales over the past five years, although 2025's Ghost of Yote helped reverse the trend.

[00:35] Have you increased the price of the PlayStation 5 and the cost of a PS Plus subscription? Sony is under pressure to deliver. Sony needs some more hit PlayStation games. Data reported on by Gamefiles, Steven Totillo suggests. Totillo has said that Sony has sold millions fewer copies of games. It's either published or

[00:51] developed for PlayStation consoles each financial year since April 2020, which saw boom in gaming due to lockdowns and release of heavy hitters, such as the last of his part 2 and Ghost of Tsushima. Last year reversed the trend with a small bump, filled by Ghost of Yote's release.

[01:04] So, what has Sony actually released over the last half decade? Well, there have been some high-profile bombs, including the disastrous live-service game Concorde, but it's worth remembering that through it all, Sony has had a number of smash hits despite the overall sales figure falling. Arrowheads Helldevers 2, for example, remains the fastest-selling

[01:20] PlayStation Studios game of all time. Astrobot might not have sold at the same level, but it was critically acclaimed. Insomniac has released Marvel's Spider-Man Miles Morales and Spider-Man 2, both of which have sold millions, and Sony's Santa Monica released God of War Ragnarok,

[01:33] which was a huge hit. Polyphony released Grand Trees with 7, Gorilla released Horizon Forbidden West, these are all major launches. But the data doesn't lie. As Totillo points out, remakes and remasters, of which Sony has released a handful in recent years, haven't closed the gap.

[01:47] Sony is selling fewer PlayStation Studios games on PlayStation consoles, which may have factored into its decision to pull away from PC and return to PlayStation exclusivity for its single-player releases. However, Sony will be happy that total PlayStation

[01:59] game sales, including sales of games from third-party developers and publishers, have risen in recent years. So overall, it's a positive picture, it's just that Sony published games could use a shot in the arm. The data reinforces the idea that Sony has struggled to release new PlayStation 5 games this generation.

[02:13] Some Sony developers haven't released new games in years. Chief among them is Naughty Dog, which is working on intergalactic, the heretic prophet, but hasn't released a brand-new game since the aforementioned The Last of Us Part 2, six years ago. Ben Studio's last game was 2019's

[02:27] Days Gone. Media Molecule's last was 2020's Dreams. It's impossible to point out these slowdown in sales of first-party Sony games without also talking about the many games that has cancelled in recent years. Sony's well-documented live-service game push resulted in mega-hit,

[02:41] but The Last of Us Online was cancelled, Concord and its developer Firewalk was shut down, and they got a war live-service game from Blue Point didn't even make it to announcement before it fell by the wayside. Then there's the cancelled Twisted Metal live-service game and cancelled games

[02:53] at Sony Ben. Haven Studio's Fair Games is still officially in the works, but may have been renamed. All those cancelled games have certainly left a hole in Sony's release schedule. Not included in the data are recently released PlayStation Studios games,

[03:05] such as House Mark Seros, although that appears to have struggled in sales terms and bungee's marathon, which has also appeared to miss sales targets. Moving on, Bethesda Game Studios has published patch notes for its Fallout 76 infestations update, revealing plans to launch its current

[03:20] gen update for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S this summer. Fallout 76 first launched for PC, PS4 and Xbox One in 2018, but instead of following that up with a full-fledged next-gen update with

[03:32] the release of the PS5 and Xbox Series in late 2020, Bethesda chose to focus on supporting its existing platforms. It's a decision that left PS5 and Xbox Series players hoping for any news as we now approach the sixth anniversary of the initial launch of the consoles.

[03:45] No firm release date yet, but Bethesda doesn't leave players with a simple tease. Testing for the very long-awaited current gen updates is confirmed to take place sometime in June with the full launch sent to follow later this summer. And that's your daily fix for Tuesday, June 2nd. Now that you caught up on the news,

[04:00] check out our hands-on preview of Star Fox. I'm Damon Hatfield and for all your video game news, stay tuned to IGN.