PS4 first-party success is "all about the teams and the creators"

During E3 we sat down the vice president of Sony Worldwide Studios in Europe, Michael Denny, for a chat about the state of affairs for Sony's first-party operations. Providing gamers with some of the best content in recent years, games like The Last of Us, Uncharted 4, Horizon: Zero Dawn, and God of War, and with upcoming titles like Spider-Man, Death Stranding, The Last of Us: Part II, and Ghost of Tsushima on the horizon, it's certainly not the worst of times to be in charge of Sony's internal development studios.

"The last couple of years have been absolutely stellar for us," says Denny. "If you look at last year with games like Horizon: Zero Dawn, and Uncharted 4 and GT Sport, then the start of this year with the amazing God of War then Detroit as well and then the games that we've been talking about at E3, the games to come later this year. We have Spider-Man and Days Gone coming and then further into the future The Last of Us 2, Death Stranding, so it's an amazing time for Worldwide Studio, but that's really all about the teams and the creators we have, really expressing themselves and being allowed to express themselves and make games they're passionate about."

The great success PlayStation is enjoying with their first-party offering in recent years is something the organisation has been working towards for years.

"If you learn anything being in games development, it's experience and teams learn every game they make, so the next game can become better and better. In our triple-A space, our traditional big games, you can see how much they're coming to the fore, but still encouraging innovation with games like Dreams that I think showed fantastically here again on the booth today. These are magical experiences that our fans are going to enjoy so much.,"

Next we brought up Days Gone, and the patience Worldwide Studios has had with Sony Bend as they've built their team to be able to deliver on what's ultimately a much bigger project than anything they've done before.

"Ultimately we want the best games possible. And to get the best games possible we really do trust in and empower our creators and our teams and our studios. I think our role in an exec management team is really to facilitate and allow that creativity to flow so that ultimately our fans, our players get the best games possible."

What do you think about Sony's approach to first-party development?