We’re yet to receive official word from Sony, but by all accounts, it’s scaling back its PC publishing strategy.
The news comes by way of a flurry of notable leakers, all of whom have been proven to have knowledge of PlayStation’s plans in the past.
Among them are Bloomberg’s notoriously in-the-know Jason Schreier, and the equally reliable Nate the Hate, who’s accurately revealed tons of Sony-related snippets in the past.
Writing on X (or Twitter), the latter gave a little more insight into the timeline of the platform holder’s decision.
He said:
“You'll be seeing fewer single player games arrive on PC. The decision to shift away from supporting PC was made last year. Naturally, some may still release (pending how far along the ports were) but it no longer appears to be a priority for Sony moving forward.”
This follows comments made by Schreier on the Triple Click podcast, where he noted:
“I think the sense I'm getting is that [Sony is] backing away from putting its exclusive console stuff, like traditional single player stuff, on PC.”
Schreier has hinted at a follow-up report in due course, so we may get some more meaningful information on this soon.
In the meantime, though, the decision doesn’t look all that surprising once you dig into some of the facts around this.
For example, PC ports generated around 1.5% of PlayStation’s revenue in the four years since the strategy got underway in earnest – a drop in the ocean really, with much of that driven by the wildly successful Helldivers 2.
It’s worth noting here that there’s no indication the platform holder will stop porting live service games such as Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls or 4:LOOP.
It’s also unlikely to change its approach to externally developed games, like Death Stranding 2: On the Beach and Kena: Scars of Kosmora – neither of which are created in-house, by wholly owned studios.
But it could potentially mean major in-house projects like Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet and Marvel’s Wolverine remain PS5 exclusive moving forward.
Sony will, of course, have more data on all this than we do. It’ll know how much it costs to make these ports, how much revenue they’re generating, and what kind of impact they’re having on its ecosystem. If the scales are tipping in the wrong direction, then that would certainly explain its decision.
We also suspect the platform holder may have been frustrated by its inability to capture PC players within its PSN framework, with a robust pushback from players on Steam et al forcing it to make logins optional.
Some have suggested that Xbox’s decision to deliver an open console with access to all storefronts may have played into its thinking here as well, but none of that money would be going to Microsoft, so we’re not sure it’s a factor in its thinking.
At the end of the day, Sony’s only ever been obligated to support the PS5, and anything outside of that has always been classed as an experiment. It seems that experiment is now coming to a conclusion.