PlayStation Studio’s business CEO Hermen Hulst has told staff that their single-player games will no longer be released on PC, reports Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier. Multiplayer games, including Marvel Tokon will continue to have a broader release base, but titles such as Saros will remain PlayStation exclusive.
Sony has been cagey about PC releases in the past few months. Saros director Gregory Louden was asked last month if the game was coming to PC and replied, “We’re only talking about Saros and the launch on the PlayStation 5.”
We do not know the reason for this policy change, but we can have some well-informed guesses. Firstly, the PC release of Sony games has not been smooth, and they have not sold that well. Secondly, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has been making noises about reversing Microsoft’s policy of bringing their big games to PlayStation 5, so it looks like we are back to having console-exclusive games again.
All this is probably being driven by the fact that new consoles for both companies are being delayed due to the shortage of components and the price of memory. They need to keep on selling consoles that are over five years old, and bringing back exclusives will help.
For Sony, this decision is fairly easy, but for Microsoft, it’s a far bigger door to slam. Sales of Xbox games on PlayStation have been impressive and will have brought some much-needed cash to the Xbox coffers.
It was nice while it lasted, a couple of years of everyone being in one big cuddle puddle, but it looks like the console wars will be starting up again.
Source: Bluesky
