PlayStation Makes Several New Announcements

PlayStation has relaunched its Play at Home initiative. 

Since its debut last April, Play at Home has been PlayStation’s method of promoting safe health practices during the pandemic. The program also supports small independent game studios through a $10 million fund.

Play at Home is offered to PlayStation gamers free of charge as an alternative to its PS Plus service, which has 47.4 million paying subscribers worldwide. PS Plus competes more directly with Xbox Game Pass, which has 18 million subscribers. 

The first game available through Play at Home, “Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection,” was downloaded 10 million times last year. The upcoming round starts with the PS4 version of “Ratchet & Clank” on March 1. 

The company also announced a new VR headset and controller for PS5, though its release is a ways off. “There’s still a lot of development underway for our new VR system, so it won’t be launching in 2021,” said Sony executive Hideaki Nishino.

As for those PS5 shortage issues? “Demand was greater than we anticipated,” PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan said. “That, along with the complexities of the supply chain issues, resulted in a slightly lower supply than we initially anticipated.”

Sony recently reported that 4.5 million PS5 units were sold in November and December. Ryan says the company wants to sell more PS5s in 2021 than the 14.9 million units PS4 sold in its first year.