Will PS4 Experience a Post-Launch Drought?

In a roundtable interview at Tokyo Game Show today, Sony's Shuhei Yoshida talked about the typical post-launch release lull that typically accompanies a new wave of consoles, and how the PlayStation 4 hopes to avoid it.

After the launch of the PS3, Xbox 360 and more recently the Wii U, there has been a drought of releases lasting anywhere from three to six months, during which time new console owners sometimes became rather less enamoured with their new purchase. This is largely down to perfectly natural strategic decisions on the behalf of the large publishers, said Yoshida. "By nature publishers see opportunities, especially very large publishers, and will always be there with five or six games at the launch of any platform," he says.

"Large publishers typically target that date, not two months or six months after, so it’s natural that the first peak comes at launch and then there will be a drought."

Asked whether the PlayStation 4 might avoid this drought, Yoshida placed faith in the many indie developers working with Sony to fill in potential gaps in the release schedule. "Now there are so many games developed by indie teams," he says. "Of course money is important to these teams, but it is often not the primary motivation, and so they will spend extra time [in development] if they need to. So these games will be continuously released through next year. That is my expectation."

Earlier in the roundtable discussion, Yoshida offered further reasoning behind Sony's determined courtship of independent developers over recent years. "We do think indie games are very very important, and we do think indie games can sell hardware," he said. "Games like Journey and Walking Dead showed a very strong message to the industry and consumers as well when they won various game awards. Small games can make a huge impact."

After eight years Keza MacDonald is still not bored of writing about video games, which is just as well, as her skills at demon-slaying and pretend guitar are pretty much non-transferable. You can follow her on IGN and Twitter.

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