Rohde: Sony "taking a lot of risks", new IPs "anything but safe"

No other publisher would touch The Last of Us and Beyond: Two Souls right now, to hear Sony's Scott Rohde tell it.

Speaking to Gamespot, the software product development head highlighted The Unfinished Swan, Beyond: Two Souls, The Last of Us, God of War: Ascension, Wonderbook and Sound Shapes as examples of ways Sony is fostering innovation even as it practices iteration.

"Our press conference could have been twice as long because we have that much content that we could show, we just didn't have time to show it all," he said.

"These are all innovations that other companies would be a little scared to embrace, I believe. So innovation is top of the charts at PlayStation."

Challenged on whether Beyond and The Last of Us really vary much from other successful Sony efforts like Heavy Rain and Uncharted, Rohde insisted they do.

"If you can find another publisher in this industry who would build Beyond, I'd like to meet that publisher. I really think that [Beyond] is as far from 'safe' as it gets," he said.

"Heavy Rain, by itself was not a 'safe' title. And to do it again with a totally different story, a larger investment, and to bring Hollywood in, to really enhance that genre that really isn't touched by many folks in our industry, I think is anything but 'safe.'

"And when you think about what Naughty Dog is doing, when I hear 'safe' I hear Uncharted 4, Uncharted 5, Uncharted 6, Uncharted 7. And for a developer of that caliber, this late in the cycle of the platform, to introduce a totally new IP for a different audience - meaning going from T-rated to M-rated - I think is anything but 'safe.' I really feel like we're taking a lot of risks with both of those titles."