Sony's Jim Ryan wants "hundreds of millions" of people to have access to PlayStation titles
PlayStation president and CEO Jim Ryan has noted his frustration that Sony's games can't reach more people.
Sony Interactive Entertainment head Jim Ryan wants "hundreds of millions" of people playing the games PlayStation and its roster of developers makes, and he's noted that there’s a poor chance that dream will become a reality if PlayStation limits its products to its own hardware alone.
Speaking during a keynote speech during GI Live: London, the PlayStation head expressed frustration that games struggle to reach the levels of market penetreation that we see from music , films and TV.
“I would [...] like to see a world where the games that we make at PlayStation can be enjoyed by many tens of millions of people," he said in the interview. "Perhaps hundreds of millions of people. Right now success with the current console model, a really great PlayStation hit you’re talking ten or 20 million people being able to play that game.
"We're talking about games stacking up against music, we're talking about games stacking up against movies. Music and movies, they can be enjoyed by almost limitless audiences.
"And I think some of the art that our studios are making is some of the finest entertainment that has been made anywhere in the world. And to kind-of gate the audience for the wonderful art, wonderful entertainment that our studios are making... to gate the audience for that at 20 or 30 million frustrates me. I would love to see a world where hundreds of millions of people can enjoy those games."
This isn't totally suprising to hear from Ryan, after all we are seeing Sony start to experiment with releasing games away from PlayStation hardware exclusively. Earlier this year, the company noted that it will "continue to look at the right times" to bring PlayStation exclusives to PC. We've already seen Days Gone and Horizon Zero Dawn come to PC, which is all part of Sony's plan to make PlayStation games available to more players.
The company's continued investment in services like PlayStation Now are also likley to be galvanizing Ryan's approach to getting PlayStation games out there to more people.
To that end, we're also going to start seeing PlayStation games on mobile, at some point, per a PlayStation job listing published earlier this year.
During the interview, Ryan also noted that Sony's Play at Home Initiative saw 60 a massive million games redeemed.