GoKawiilis a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
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The video game industry is in turmoil. Microsoft and Sony are starting to pivot to their next consoles, but it’s not looking great: Prices are soaring, Sony is killing the video game disc, and Microsoft is jettisoning studios ahead of the transition. What could entice people to pay?
On the Xbox front, we genuinely can’t say. But on June 5th, Sony dropped an unusual number of hints about the future of PlayStation in an investor “business meeting” Q&A.
This Q&A arrived a month before Sony announced the end of PlayStation discs. But when I reread it with the death of discs in mind… it hits differently. Let’s walk through it, shall we?
Page two is where Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Hideaki Nishino drops the first hints (all bolding mine):
In developing the next-generation platform, we aim to anticipate changes in how players play and their evolving needs, while making the PlayStation ecosystem more accessible and approachable to a broader range of players.
Those words might seem trite and meaningless by themselves. Isn’t it every company’s responsibility to skate to where the puck is going to be? But Sony has a specific idea where that puck is headed.
The top of page three begins with an investor question about the price of a next-gen PlayStation. But instead of talking about price right away, Sony intriguingly hijacks the question:
First, we regard hardware as the base for providing the gaming experience, and by offering products such as the PlayStation Portal Remote Player (PS Portal), we aim to provide experiences tailored to users’ play styles beyond the living room, which has traditionally been considered the primary usage environment.
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