We previously reported back in March that PlayStation was considering partially stepping back on its push to release their PlayStation exclusive games on PC. In a new development from Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, we’ve now heard that during a town hall within the company earlier today, PlayStation CEO Hermen Hulst confirmed this plan and thus made it official. Moving forwards, PlayStation’s single-player, narrative-based games will no longer be ported over to PC.
According to Schreier, a PC release of Ghost of Yotei was planned before the shift in strategy, as Sony seeks to defend its hardware business. The next Xbox will be made using PC technology, which has led to immense speculation regarding the availability of PC storefronts on the platform too. Should either the current or future Xbox projects implement Steam compatibility, Xbox owners would be able to play Sony’s library of major titles.
Along with the potential of accidentally enabling unintended cross-platform support, it’s also suggested that Sony’s venture into the PC market hasn’t been a particularly lucrative one for them anyway. Their previous strategy saw their single-player games released on PC over a year after launch on their flagship PS5 console, resulting in lesser and slower sales of their PC ports.
Despite this change in strategy, Sony will continue to release their online, multiplayer-based games to other platforms. Having a broader player base is one of the key metrics to success for live-service games, with larger audiences meaning greater engagement rates and likely higher in-game transaction sales.
With Ghost of Yotei now scrapped for PC, the final port of a major PlayStation single-player game is seemingly Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, which released in March. The Kojima Productions game was published by Sony themselves, who had already greenlit and announced the PC port before their change in strategy.
Time will tell what effects Sony’s shift back towards PlayStation exclusivity will have on the business. The major gaming platform holders are seemingly all being tempted once more to become walled-off with their exclusives, but it remains to be seen what impact a reignition of the ‘console wars’ will have on the modern gaming industry.
