• According to reports out of Japan, Sony is set to invest as much as $2.13 billion in R&D for future live service and mixed reality PlayStation games.
• If true, it would double the amount the company spend on gaming R&D in 2020.
• Live service in particular is one area that PlayStation is lagging behind its competitors.

This week much of the attention has been on Microsoft as it continues to negotiate the hurdles laid before it in pursuit of its Activision Blizzard acquisition. In contrast, many are looking at Sony and what it plans to do with PlayStation, but recent reports out of Japan suggest a significant investment in live service and mixed reality gaming is on the cards.

This according to Nikkei, which says Sony could invest as much as $2.13 billion on research and development, specifically focusing on “extended reality”, as it is termed.

If the reported figure is indeed correct, it would represent nearly 40 percent of the company’s spending in this segment for the 2023 fiscal year, which would also double the amount it invested during 2020.

“Sony’s pivot from a focus on hardware to a subscription-based business model is spurring the company to step up R&D. Having long relied on sales of its PlayStation game console, the company will now focus on live service games that let customers purchase add-ons for titles streamed online,” the publication wrote.

“Sony projects that the market for add-on style games will reach $19 billion in 2026, a figure that would surpass the market for hardware like the PlayStation for the first time,” it adds.

As Engadget points out, the live service space is one that PlayStation does not have a lot of pull in currently, having only launched one live service title in 2021. Following this reported investment, however, PlayStation could launch as many as 12 between now and 2026.

As such, we should expect to see many more Fortnite-style titles out of PlayStation Studios in the coming years.

Shifting to mixed reality, Sony is said to want to invest in more titles and projects that are metaverse-related or adjacent. The company already has new hardware in the market in the form of the PlayStation VR2, but the headset does not have much in terms of notable exclusives like it does within the pure console ecosystem.

To make more engaging VR titles that players want to buy and invest in, Sony will reportedly tap up the nine studios that it owns or has a stake in.

While this investment sounds sizeable, we do have to wonder where a better service to rival that of GamePass factors into everything. PlayStation may be able to keep pace with Xbox in terms of the power of its hardware, and even surpass when it comes to the quality of its exclusives, but services is where its competitor still has it well and truly beat.