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Sony Interactive Entertainment seems to be reconsidering its multiplatform strategy and abandoning its plan to release its own PC games. According to journalist Jason Schrier of Bloomberg, new projects from PlayStation’s internal studios may again remain exclusives for PlayStation 5 in the future, which means the loss of such releases for PC users.
The company took its first steps towards PC release back in 2020 when Horizon Zero Dawn appeared on Steam. After that, other high-profile PlayStation titles gradually started to be released on the platform. Among them are The Last of Us Part I, Ghost of Tsushima, God of War Ragnarök, and Marvel’s Spider-Man games. However, the company is now reportedly changing its approach dramatically. In particular, it is expected that large-scale titles like Ghost of Yotei and the upcoming Saros project will be released only on PS5.
According to the sources Schreier spoke to, some games published by Sony and focused on online will still remain multiplatform. In particular, we are talking about Marvel Tokon and Marathon, which is expected to be released in the near future. In addition, Death Stranding 2, which debuted last year as a PS5 exclusive, is still planned to be released on PC in 2026. At the same time, even though the strategy may be revisited in the future, it seems unlikely that the large single-player games that PlayStation has been famous for since the PlayStation 4 era will continue to receive PC ports.
There are several reasons for this turnaround. The most obvious one is related to the weak sales of PS5 ports on PC. In most cases, these versions appeared on Steam at least a year after the console release, and their commercial results seem to have fallen short of expectations. This model stands in stark contrast to Microsoft‘s strategy of releasing its key games simultaneously on multiple platforms. For example, titles such as Fable and Forza Horizon 6 are expected to appear simultaneously on Xbox, PC, and PS5 this year. In case of abandoning PC ports, Sony will actually return to a model closer to Nintendo‘s approach, which traditionally relies on strict exclusivity of its own games, including the Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Pokémon series.
PlayStation sources also told Bloomberg that there are concerns within the company that the release of PS5 games on PC could negatively impact brand perception and potentially reduce sales of future generations of PlayStation consoles. Schreier also notes that the situation may be complicated by the emergence of the new Xbox, which is expected to become a full-fledged Windows-based PC and will probably be able to run Steam and other launchers.
In that case, owners of such a system could play PlayStation games through the PC versions. Sony seems to be trying to prevent such a scenario in advance. Presumably, the company’s management is already uncomfortable with the fact that users are already running part of the PlayStation library from Steam on the Xbox-branded ROG Ally X portable device.
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