Michael Denny, Senior Vice President of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios and head of European operations, was recently interviewed by VG247. Among various topics, he confirmed that Sony WWS will always back new IPs like Guerrilla's Horizon: Zero Dawn.
Trying anything new is always a big challenge, but I think it’s a challenge that Worldwide Studios always wants to take on. We’ll always want to back it. We see our fans out there always want to see new things.
It’s interesting that at this stage in the life cycle we’ve got big new IPs, triple A IPs, to come, with Ghost of Tsushima, and games like Days Gone as well. We’ll always back new IP. But what we’ll say is well, we’re gonna be smart about how we develop those games and make sure we have a strong pre-production process and really prove out the key elements of those games along the way. But doing new IPs and trying to create new genres is something we’ll always back.
Worldwide Studios is probably Sony's biggest asset in the console war against Microsoft's Xbox, which doesn't really have a comparable set of internal studios. Worldwide Studios got a history of allowing experimental projects, such as Media Molecule's Dreams, which we should know a lot more about at PSX 2017. This strategy is working equally great for them and for PlayStation 4 gamers.
Guerrilla's Horizon: Zero Dawn is certainly the latest success story from Sony Worldwide Studios. The action roleplaying game recently got its expansion, The Frozen Wilds, which adds a whole new area as well as roughly fifteen hours of gameplay. Francesco praised it in his review:
With a new focused story, a harshly beautiful new area, new weapons, enemies and skills, Horizon Zero Dawn The Frozen Wilds is a worthy expansion of the open world game developed by Guerrilla Games. Ultimately, it's more of the same, as the expansion lacks any major new gameplay mechanics, but when so much love is put into a product, is it really an issue? Highly recommended to all Horizon Zero Dawn owners.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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