PlayStation is reportedly no longer planning to bring the majority of its games to PC.
Citing sources familiar with PlayStation’s plans, Bloomberg reports that the tech giant will cease PC ports of its big single-player titles, including last year’s Ghost of Yōtei and next month’s Saros.
However, it will reportedly continue to release multiplayer games on both PS5 and PC, including this week’s Marathon, August’s Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls and the currently in-testing Horizon Hunters Gathering. Additionally, other single-player games made by external studios and published by PlayStation, like last year’s Death Stranding 2: On the Beach and Kena: Scars of Kosmora (coming later this year), will also still come to PC.
This is a marked departure from what Sony has been doing for the past several years, bringing the likes of The Last of Us, God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Horizon, and Uncharted to PC. In 2021, the company also acquired Nixxes Software, a Dutch studio with porting expertise, to help bring console games to PC.
When PlayStation first started doing all of this, it was surprising, as it had traditionally kept its games on its own consoles. Historically, the console business has been lucrative because companies like PlayStation produce exclusive titles to get you into their ecosystems, and from there, they earn a 30 per cent revenue cut on all of your purchases, not just games.
And indeed, Bloomberg cites this as one of the main reasons for PlayStation’s return to console exclusivity. Within the company, there are reportedly some employees who are concerned that this swath of PC releases can devalue the console business. Bloomberg also speculates that PlayStation is likely not enthused about the idea of its games playing on Xbox’s next console, which is rumoured to function like a PC.
Bloomberg also notes that PlayStation’s games have reportedly not been selling all that well on PC. This is likely due to the company’s scattershot approach to PC ports, with games sporadically being announced for the platform and often coming years after they debuted on PS5.
The only major exception has been Helldivers 2, the co-op shooter that launched simultaneously on both PS5 and PC in February 2024 and was ported to Xbox last year. With cross-play enabled, that multiplatform release has helped make the game incredibly popular, which explains why PlayStation is said to be committed to bringing other multiplayer games like Marathon to both console and PC.
PlayStation has also surely been looking at what’s happening with Xbox. Amid diminishing console sales, the company has pushed multiplatform releases so much that it’s even been running a marketing campaign in which it refers to pretty much everything as “an Xbox,” which has only confused consumers. Therefore, PlayStation likely wants a clearer delineation between what it does on console vs. PC.
It should be noted that Bloomberg‘s sources stressed that things could change in the future, given that PlayStation’s plans are constantly shifting amid the unpredictability of the gaming space. But for now, at least, you shouldn’t expect upcoming games like Saros and Marvel’s Wolverine on PC.
Source: PlayStation
