- According to a Bloomberg report, PlayStation is pivoting away from releasing PC ports for first-party titles.
- The publisher is said to have scrapped PC versions of Ghost of Yotei and Saros internally.
- The strategic shift is due to multiple reasons – the commercial underperformance of PC releases being one of them.
PlayStation is reassessing its multi-platform strategy, with Bloomberg reporting that the publisher will no longer release its tentpole first-party titles on PC. In an effort to leverage the massive PC install base, Sony had been following a delayed porting cadence for its biggest titles for the past six years. However, this approach clearly hasn’t paid the dividends the company anticipated, prompting PlayStation to return to its traditional console exclusivity roots.
Ghost of Yotei, Wolverine Will Remain PlayStation Exclusives Due to Strategic Shift
As outlined in a report from Jason Schreier, Sony “no longer plans to release its big PlayStation 5 games on PC,” according to people familiar with the company’s plans. While online or live-service games such as Marathon and Marvel Tokun: Fighting Souls will still receive multi-platform releases, single-player games such as Ghost of Yotei and Saros will remain exclusive to the PS5. Naturally, this strategy also extends to Insomniac’s Wolverine, which is poised to release later this year.
The strategy has already been put into action as Sony has internally scrapped PC plans for Ghost of Yotei and other first-party releases. With that being said, PlayStation games from third-party studios, such as Death Stranding 2 and Kena: Scars of Kosmora, will still be arriving on Steam. The news will undoubtedly come as a blow to PC players, who’ll be missing out on the best PS5 exclusives going forward.
The reasons behind this shift are pretty straightforward. For starters, PlayStation’s PC ports just haven’t sold all that well. While early ports such as Horizon Zero Dawn and God of War showed plenty of promise, the momentum has since tapered off. The best example of this is Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, a title that sold like hotcakes on consoles. However, its Steam release managed to amass a peak CCU count of just 28,189 players, a stark decline from the 66,436 users who turned up to play Spider-Man Remastered back in 2022.
Given the disappointing sales, “a faction within PlayStation” has expressed concerns about PC ports damaging the console’s brand, with the returns diminishing rapidly. As such, the publisher is now reverting to the console-exclusive strategy that has historically been the linchpin behind its success.
So, what do you make of PlayStation pivoting away from PC ports? Let us know in the comments below.
