At Sony's Investor Relations Day 2018, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO John Kodera worried fans by suggesting that the PS4 is in the final stages of its life cycle. Fans instantly began to speculate on whether this would mean that support for the console would be ending sometime soon as Sony turns its efforts to the future of the brand, presumably the PlayStation 5. But fans can rest easy as it seems that Sony isn't quite done with the console yet.

Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida also spoke during Investor Relations Day 2018, telling fans to expect more PlayStation exclusives in future. Sony is making preparations well beyond the already announced line-up of PS4 exclusives out this year, including games like God of War, Detroit: Become Human, and The Last of Us Part Two. This will involve improving its IP as Sony aims to bring more players into the PlayStation fold by creating new franchises as well as existing first-party series. It will also involve releasing more additional content for these games.

This strategy will come to fruition over the next three years, said the Sony executives. The strategy that they were outlining runs through to March 31, 2021. This means that PlayStation fans could potentially see one or two of these new exclusive games being announced during the PlayStation E3 2018 press conference.

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According to industry analyst Michael Pachter, exclusive games are no longer as important now as they were before. In an interview, Pachter even suggested that first-party exclusives may not even be a major factor in why people buy the PS4. Moreover, Microsoft's Xbox One has already been criticized for its dearth of exclusives and some may ask why Sony is putting so much effort into winning a battle it appears to have already won.

But it seems that Sony isn't pledging more resources into making first-party exclusives solely in an effort to sell more PS4 consoles. During the Investor Relations Day, the company also expressed its interest in growing the services side of the business. The PlayStation Network already makes more than $9 billion a year and has more than 80 million users (over 34 million of them are paying subscribers), but Sony wants to increase those figures even more.

By releasing more exclusive titles which have additional content (including DLC expansions and microtransactions), Sony will be able to draw more players into its ecosystem and get existing ones to spend more money too. So even if Sony isn't necessarily focused on selling more PS4 consoles, releasing more exclusives could still have a major impact on the company's bottom line.

Source: Dualshockers