It is 2026 and Sony has finished steaming Jim Ryan's ghost out of the office sofa cushions once and for all. Per a report from Bloomberg, the PlayStation company is pulling all the way back on its strategy of releasing its exclusive games on PC, a U-turn on a welcome policy introduced during the Ryan era and to which I have grown quite accustomed over the last six years.
Bloomberg's enticingly anonymous Sony sources—remaining nameless for lack of authorisation to actually blab about this stuff—say the first PS-exclusive we can kiss goodbye to is Ghost of Yotei, Sucker Punch's 2025 follow-up to Ghost of Tsushima that did rather well with critics when it released last year. Likewise, Housemarque's upcoming third-person bullet-hell Saros is also tipped to stay console-bound.
But those lavishly-produced singleplayer feasts Sony has prepared for us—after a waiting period of one to two years—since 2020's PC release of Horizon Zero Dawn? It sounds like those are going away. Though at least we are still getting Kena: Scars of Kosmora and Death Stranding 2. Just slipping in under the wire there, Kojima. Age hasn't slowed you down one bit.
I've reached out to Sony for comment on this scuttlebutt, and will update this piece if I hear back.
This news does not come out of the blue. Videogame ink slinger Jason Schreier (who also authored this Bloomberg piece) and Digital Foundry's John Linneman were out and about dropping hints that Sony was reconsidering its PC strategy as recently as last week.
It seemed, and seems, an odd move. At least one ex-Sony head honcho has compared releasing on PC to "printing money," which led plenty of people to assume it would be the new normal in perpetuity. But like I said in that piece last week: Sony's recent PC releases haven't lit the world on fire, and if it feels the time and resources spent on porting to PC could be spent better elsewhere, or if it feels like releasing its games more widely undermines its console business, that could easily justify a move like this.
Indeed, Schreier references at least one faction inside Sony that rankles at putting games on non-Sony platforms. It weakens the brand, apparently.
I've never fallen in love with any of Sony's erstwhile PS-exclusives, but I'd still be sad to see them go. More games on my platform of choice—an open and free (as in freedom) platform of choice, at that—is a good thing.
But mostly, I just hope that Sony's PC porting maestros at Nixxes come out of all this alright.
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