PlayStation is interested in leveraging some of its legacy IPs, according to its CEO

Hermen Hulst, one of PlayStation’s joint CEOs, recently sat down to talk with Famitsu in order to talk about the brand’s recent 30th Anniversary and, most important of all, to discuss its future. In this interview, he revealed something fascinating and promising about some classic PlayStation IPs.

At one point (which @realradec translated into English) Famitsu asked Hulst about all the classic PlayStation characters that appeared as fun little cameos in Astro Bot, which prompted many fans to ask Sony for a proper revival of franchises like Ape Escape, Jak & Daxter, Sly Cooper and more. Hulst replied by saying, “Our extensive IP portfolio is an important asset for PlayStation, and as part of our efforts to strengthen our portfolio, we continually explore opportunities to leverage our legacy IP as well as develop new franchises.”

This is a particularly interesting and optimistic answer since numerous people have accused PlayStation of leaving most of its classic franchises behind. However, Astro Bot did an effective job at both reminding players about these legacy IPs and inspiring them to ask the company for new entries in all these series. There’s literally an entire level-themed after Ape Escape in Astro Bot, so why can’t Sony greenlight the development of an entire new game in that style?

Fortunately for PlayStation fans, the future ahead of them is quite bright because Astro Bot was a critical and commercial success, to the point that it even won the Game of the Year award. This may inspire Sony to keep making new cartoony 3D mascot platformers, so franchises like Ape Escape, Jak & Daxter, Sly Cooper, MediEvil and more may make a comeback very soon.

PlayStation wants to publish more Third Party video games

But of course, the PlayStation brand is not just about the first party games and franchises the company produces firsthand, since it has also established close relationships with many other studios and publishers in order to make their games exclusive to PS4 and/or PS5. In another part of the interview, Famitsu asked Hulst about Team Ninja’s Rise of the Ronin and Shift Up’s Stellar Blade, two great third-party PS5 exclusives that came out in 2024.

Hulst told Famitsu that creativity and great games come from everywhere, and while the company is always looking to develop content within PlayStation Studios, it also collaborates with external studios. “It’s important to have a wide variety of games in our portfolio that can be enjoyed by all types of players. To provide fresh joy and experiences to PlayStation players, we are constantly reviewing the contents of our portfolio and considering expanding the genres that are in demand and introducing new types of games. Our aim is to publish games from the world’s best creators,” said Hulst.

This means that we can definitely expect more third-party PS5 exclusives in the near future. Some Reddit users disapproved of Hulst’s answer, calling the idea of timed exclusives like Stellar Blade or Final Fantasy XVI an “anti-consumer practice.” However, Sony has been quite open to publishing games that are not 100% exclusive in the past few years (Like Helldivers 2, which Hulst mentioned in the Famitsu interview because it launched on PC as well), not to mention that it helped studios like Shift Up with the development of games like Stellar Blade. It seems PlayStation actually wants to help them make bigger and better games instead of simply paying for some easy-timed exclusives.