PlayStation All-Stars Shows Christmas Family Focus for Sony

For the coming Christmas shopping season, when most video game publishers focus on launching their biggest titles for the year, Sony is trying to focus on picking up the money that families tend to spend on entertainment experiences for their living room.

Shuhei Yodhida, the leader of the Sony Worldwide Studios, admits to Game Informer that, “We’d love to have multi-million sellers for the holiday. But each title needs time to develop. Especially new IP like The Last of Us. God of War has always come out in March, so that’s a natural time to aim at.”

“Our strategy for Christmas is to go big on family-friendly titles. This is a neglected genre for the PlayStation 3, but as it matures, I think it’s really important to have these games on the platform. I think we have a great lineup this holiday to complement third parties’ big core games,” Yodhida goes on to mention.

The biggest launch of the fall for the PlayStation 3 home console is PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, a game that takes a number of characters from the various Sony-controlled franchises and allows players to then battle to the death in custom-made arenas.

The game initially seems a clone to similar efforts from Nintendo, but the various characters are very well defined and it’s a pleasure to smack Nathan Drake around as the Big Daddy from BioShock.

PlayStation All-Star Battle Royale will be launched in North America on October 23 and one day later in Europe.

Sony has a number of other big PlayStation 4 releases planned for 2013, including a much-awaited God of War prequel called Ascension and the new IPs The Last of Us and Beyond: Two Souls, the last two new games to arrive on the current home console from the company.

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