You might recall that back in May, Jason Schreier reported that Sony had made the decision to stop porting their singleplayer games to PC, and that Hermen Hulst had held an internal townhall meeting to inform employees. Now, we have an update from Sony that’s carefully worded, and a less carefully worded rebuttal from Schreier.
Japanese magazine Famitsu conducted an interview with PlayStation CEO Hideaki Nishino and published it in the latest issue. In the interview, Nishino was asked about the reports suggesting PlayStation was backing out of PC ports.
Now, I need to be clear: I do not have the magazine, so I’m relying on other people here. On ResetEra, Red Kong XIX posted what they claim is the original quote, along with a DeepL translation. Push Square have also posted some translations of what was said. I do not have access to a translator, so I also used various other translation tools and AI to confirm that both versions seem accurate.
“We’ve always determined platform selection based on the characteristics of each title. If releasing a title on PC would maximize the gaming experience, we’ll continue to consider that option,” said Nishino. “for single-player games developed by our first-party studios, we intend to further sharpen the value of the game experiences that can be offered on PlayStation. On the other hand, for live-service games, we believe it is important that as many people as possible can play them through online multiplayer, so we continue to see release on both PS5 and PC as the basic approach.”
Nishino’s wording is very corporate, leaving the door open to future changes of plan and never fully commiting one way or the other. But it does largely confirm what Schreier reported previously: multiplayer and live-service will still come to PC.
On singleplayer games, he uses deliberately foggy wording, but it seems like they are saying singleplayer games are being kept exclusive to “sharpen the value” of the console.
Meanwhile, Jason Schreier was lurking on ResetEra where he revealed internally Sony is being a bit more definitive.
“I guess they’re not going to lay this out publicly, but there’s no ambiguity in their strategy,” Schreier said.
“Hermen Hulst told staff that their single-player narrative games will be PlayStation only, and he explained that they were inconsistent with their PC releases, they didn’t make enough money, and they want to keep their IP aligned to their own platform. Confirmed this with two people who heard him say it. There’s no ‘case by case’ here.”
And that, really, is the story here. Publicly, Sony is keeping the corporate escape hatch open. Internally, if Schreier’s reporting is accurate, the message is far simpler: first-party single-player games are for PlayStation, while PC is for live-service games that need the biggest possible audience.
Or, to put it another way, don’t expect God of War: Laufey on PC.
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