PlayStation aims to be best place to play and publish games, Sony CEO Hiroki Totoki says

In a profile on Japanese businesses, Sony CEO Hiroki Totoki discusses the company's overall goals for its PlayStation games entertainment division, saying that users are just as important as the content that they consume.

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Sony keeps the top spot for two big reasons: Gamers continue buying games, and publishers keep selling them. PlayStation is so big because it can efficiently funnel a vast swath of games into its storefront ecosystem, leading to a veritable market of third-party content to choose from. This size is maintained through carefully-inked deals with publishers and developers that offer favorable terms for both sides.

In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Sony CEO Hiroki Totoki says that the overall focus for PlayStation is bifurcated between these two points--consumers and publishers.

"We are always talking about how PlayStation should be the best place to play from a user's perspective, but at the same time, to make PlayStation the best place to publish. We have great relationships with third-party publishers, and of course, we have great first-party studios," Totoki said.

Gaming is a substantial part of Sony's revenue, and spending on and in third-party games makes the bulk of these earnings.

In FY24, PlayStation generated a record-breaking $30 billion in gross revenue from the Game and Network Services division, representing a significant part of the company's total earnings for the year.

"The entertainment business is more than 60% of our revenue now," Totoki said in the interview.

To better control its PlayStation ecosystem, new reports state that Sony will pull back from selling its singleplayer first-party games on PC. The idea may be to reserve these games exclusively for the PlayStation console ecosystem, which could expand with a new handheld, in a bid to keep profitability intact. If Sony is the only one selling these games, then they will maintain more profit on a per-sale basis, as selling games on the Epic Store and Steam not only reduces how much money Sony will get per unit sale, but Sony also has to pay these firms to even host their games on the platforms.