PlayStation discarding their PC

During a recent interview Jason Schreier stated that he believes that Sony will pull back from their PC plans and that future games won’t release on PC. Many have stated that the games have not sold well on PC and there is the looming new Xbox console that will be able to play PC games. I can see many reasons why Sony might want to pull back from PC, but I feel this will have negative consequences on PlayStations bottom line.

Jason Shreier wrote an article on Bloomberg setting out what he has been told by ‘reliable insiders’. My experience is that these ‘reliable insiders’ are not always as reliable as they seem. This does not mean that this new/old direction towards their console exclusive practice is not real or true, but I always stand back and take stories like this with a pinch of salt. The investor fireside chat that was done by PlayStation executives mid June 2025 they stated that in order for them to increase profit and growth for PlayStation in order to reach the growth they pitched to their investors, it would included taking their blockbuster tentpole titles off console, meaning movies, tv and putting those games in new people’s hands to play. Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida stated that putting PlayStation games on PC is ‘almost like printing money’ due to low production cost and new, higher revenue potential. Sony are not the only company who decided to follow this strategy, with Square putting their Final Fantasy titles that were PlayStation exclusives, not only on PC, but on Xbox as well, with their Final Fantasy 7 remakes series being ported everywhere and the final installment being on every possible platform including the Switch 2. All these companies realise that with the increased costs, slimmer player base due to the reduction in player boom during COIVD and the increase in player movement towards games as a service and lifetime games (including and huge increase in mobile gaming and transfer from mainline entertainment sources to short form content like YouTube Shorts and Tic Tock), they need to identify and exploit other revenue sources. There was even talk of Day and Date on PC for PlayStation tentpole titles. This was the timeline until the comments and later article by Jason Shreier. 

I always thought the stratergy of releasing on multiple platforms was sound, especially in the current games market. Really good games are struggling to reach and sell as many copies as is needed to ensure the game is a success (whatever that metric is as it seems more of a fantasy than a reality these days). That leaves good games (the classic. 7/10 games that are good but not great) and ok games to wallow in the pool of obscurity or lack of interest. There is something to be said for scope and a realistic expectation of a game's reach and sales potential and this is something that pretty much all developers manage to overestimate. There are examples of development teams that actually undersell their game (Sandfall interactive and Team Cherry come to mind as both their games did well beyond their initial expectations and therefore their budgets were realistic and sales predictions were blown out of the water) but these are sadly the exception to the rule. 

But I do understand that consoles are different. I am not a console gamer and I have always struggled to understand the appeal people have to defend a game being exclusive, and by proxy a console having an exclusive strategy, as when I play a great game, I really want everyone to play it. And yes I have heard all the arguments for and against, but I just don’t get it. I get it from the platform's point of view, but as a gamer I just don’t get it from our point of view. I won’t go into all the platform exclusive arguments as to be honest you can go back and watch 15yrs of YouTube videos or Twitter/X arguments about this and in all actuality I find it quite boring and pointless. Something I will point out is the sheer number of people who Sony will be excluding from their sales potential if they decide this is their new(old) strategy going forward. 

One of the points Shreier raises (and many others in their various articles) is that PlayStation is not happy with the sales figures. The irony is that every article I read that stated this as fact, then pointed out all the games that did sell well along with the few that didn’t. If you take the viewpoint of the ex PlayStation executive Yoshida, to make it viable for Sony to publish their game on PC, they only need to sell a minimal amount of copies in order to make a profit as the only cost they need to cover is the port cost, which he stated has a low production cost. They also bought a porting company, Nixxes, who do fantastic work. I imagine if this is their future path, it is mostly due to them seeing the great success of their multiplayer games on both PC and Xbox compared to their sales of single player games. I do worry about Nixxes, especially after the Bluepoint fiasco that has recently unfolded. 

Now I am sure they are aware that there are many issues with how and when they release their games on PC and it is mentioned in every article that they would be better off releasing their games day and date. The simple fact is when God of War releases on PC and it is 5yrs later than the console release at full £70 price, all the impetus has gone and PC gamers are not going to pay full price for a 5yr old game. PlayStation not understanding PC gamers is one of their biggest issues which I will touch on again and again in this article. PC gamers have always had access to a lot of well priced games and have shown time and time again they are willing to wait for a sale if the price is not right. This self control and awareness of the value of a game has led people to believe that PC gamers just want cheap games or, at worst, they just don’t buy games. This is a perpetual description that is thrown around in the war of devices. The other lot don’t buy games and it is as ridiculous as all the other baseless arguments people come up with to justify their choice in gaming hardware. Pc gamers are often the highest day one purchasers of games, so long as they feel the game is worth it and the price is right. 

For me the biggest issue Sony faces when putting PlayStation games on PC and steam specifically, is the astounding increase in the volume of games released every year. Steam publishing tools means people can self publish games with ease and therefore people can bypass the usual publisher vetting that may result in games not being greenlit. Sure this results in many ‘slop’ games that are synonymous with Steam (unfairly in my opinion as there is a game for everyone and these games do get bought), but more often than not it results in games that people love and buy, if only in small numbers. So many niche games are made and have been published purely because of Steam as no publisher would have seen value in it. Last year almost 20 000 games were released on Steam. Many of those have less than 100 reviews and therefore do not pass the threshold in order to be highlighted by Steam but they still do and many of those games have positive ratings, often very positive. I am not sure where it was but I saw that there were 2700 games released last year on the PlayStation. Although a few thousand games are impressive on the PlayStation, the prospect of releasing a game on Steam requires a different mindset in order to garner the sales needed. Also a PlayStation tentpole title on the PlayStation itself is guaranteed to be a big seller as they have a captive audience and they can push the game to the front with essentially free marketing. They do not have this on Steam, although as a big publisher they are afforded a huge marketing boost, they still need to fight for attention that they don’t need on their own devices. 

I said I would repeatedly go back to Sony’s lack of understanding of the PC platform as it is one driving factor in the perception they have of failure on the PC. The need for a PlayStation account to play their games is a prime example of this. They were met with a strong backlash when they tried this with their multiplayer games and even stronger when they tried it with their single player games. This is something that any one with any PC experience could have warned them against but for some reason they did not think to get a PC Consultant onboard. This is not the first time a company has tried this, in fact almost every big publisher tried it to some degree and not a one succeeded, even the big dog GTA (although this will be a RockStar launcher exclusive when it comes to PC and will gang busters for sure). This has coloured the view of many towards PlayStation as they tried to add this requirement to games people already had as well as newer titles. There are still people who bought Helldivers 2 on Steam who cannot play it as PSN was not in their country. This whole mess could have been avoided if PlayStation had gone about it a different way. They should have incentivised the creation of a PSN account rather than made it a necessity. I have heard the Microsoft argument but most PC gamers have a Microsoft account and even then they were not pleased that they had to sign in in order to play their legally bought game. With all the success so far of Stop Killing Games in the EU and Europe, it strongly shows the PC gamers standpoint of being able to play games they own. Sony looking to leave PC is proof of the concerns they had as they would lose access to their games if Sony pulled the PC PSN plug. 

Then there is what I feel is the true reason they would pull back from PC. The new Xbox. The Xbox Helix PC game playing console. This may be the reason that they are not wanting to sell on Steam anymore. PlayStation games on an Xbox seems to be a sacrilege. Again not a console gamer so it's a little strange to me but it seems to be a sentiment that shocks everyone from fanbois to media. I heard two podcasts the other day discussing the changes at Xbox and repeatedly they mentioned exclusives. Everything is about selling consoles. I get increasing your user base but realistically Xbox played a blinder here. I do think Xbox’s strategy was genius if only borne out of desperation and little to no other choice. That doesn’t mean it will succeed but it was a clever move. They just stopped competing with PlayStation in the console war where they are unable to make ground due to the status quo being set, and forced the industry into another route that they were heading in and therefore were the front runners in. PlayStation had a choice, either join Xbox and move to a more multi platform approach (best option for us as gamers as we then get to choose which provider offers us the best value for money or service or both), or pull back, limit their options and sales potential and therefore make less money (bad option for PlayStation gamers as they have to make that money back somehow). Sony chose the latter. 

To be frank the only people who will lose here are the PlayStation players. PlayStation will have to increase prices of their services and games to make up the lost revenue. PC gamers will barely notice. Based on the 20 000 games released last year we had on Steam that means, on average, 54 games released everyday. I have hundreds of games in my backlog, thousands of games due for release this year (that actually want to sell their game to me where I play games) , more ex-exclusive publishers and developers that are now releasing on PC day and date and that’s not even mentioning the games I am picking up every month for free on various places like the Epic Game Store. We won’t have to fight PlayStation again to not have to sign into the next game they release (because they will try it again). We won’t have to wait 3-5yrs for a port and then pay full price for said port. The idea that we are an afterthought, quite rightly according to PlayStation players, reduces PC gamers appetite and interest for their games. I have only ever bought Horizon Zero Dawn (day one I might add), because every time I look at the price of the other games they are either still £70 or have only been reduced down insignificantly. Although the God of War games, the Last Of Us games, Spiderman games, Ghost of games and so on may be great games, I refuse to pay full price for an older game especially when I am an afterthought to grab some extra cash because their vocal players have not bought enough. 

If PlayStation does not want to publish on PC anymore, that is fine let them. We have had EA, Ubisoft, Microsoft, RockStar and many others who tried to dictate to PC gamers where to play their games in order to have control over where we buy and play our games and they failed. Epic are the most recent and people have not migrated over in droves, most are only there to play Fortnite and get free games. Although we would love to play their games (kind of like Square with Final Fantasy 7 remakes) if they won’t come to us we will go to the publishers that do. If they don’t want our money we will go to publishers that do. This isn’t said with malice, but rather with reluctance and disappointment. Instead of learning and meeting us where we are they decided to return to their loyal fan base who it seems they can dictate to. 

Like I said at the beginning, I am unsure as to whether this news is true as Jason Shreier left enough wiggle room as usual to manoeuvre out if need be if all this turns out to be nonsense. It could just be PlayStation testing the waters. It could be many things as I think there is a huge amount of uncertainty and a lot of the executives not knowing what to do to walk the tightrope between their user base and the shareholders effectively. Gaming has changed a lot and the players are far more savvy than they used to be, even if they don’t always show it. Xbox turned the console war on its head by giving up and going a different route. How do PlayStation compete in a console war if there isn’t a competitor? They know they cannot have a PlayStation game on an Xbox but they were left with little choice. If they allowed it or heaven forbid went full multiplatform like Xbox, they would have to compete on hardware and price of the next console. That is not a place the leading console maker wants to be.