Nearly two months ago, reports began to surface claiming that Sony was considering drastically scaling back its PC releases of PlayStation games. Above all, it was said that single-player titles were at risk. But no matter how you look at it, this means fewer potential buyers and, consequently, possibly lower revenue.
Now, beloved former Sony and PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida, who left Sony in 2024 after 31 years, is commenting on this decision, and he isn't convinced it's the right path to take. In an interview with Back Pocket, he says:
"When I was working on the game development side first party at PlayStation, from a strategy standpoint we were not allowed to bring our AAA games to other platforms like PC. But as game development scale and investment became larger and larger, it just made sense to me that in the PS5 generation they started to move their big games to PC."
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Although there may have been some complaining fans, Yoshida does not believe that the PC games have affected PlayStation sales at all, and he thinks that the extra revenue has helped finance new games:
"Some vocal small number of consumers complain when they see PlayStation first party games are ported to PC, but I do not think that really affected adoption of PlayStation hardware like PS5 in any way. Releasing games on PC after a couple of years must have helped recoup the investment of these big budget games and helped the team and the company to reinvest that money into their new games. So from a business standpoint, I think it made sense."
It should be noted that Sony itself has not said anything about scaling back PC releases, even though the source is as reliable as it gets in cases like these, as Jason Schreier is considered very trustworthy and rarely gets it wrong.
But if they do go down this path, Yoshida says, "it's going to be interesting how they are able to maintain the investment on the big budget games on first party side."
What's your take on it? Should Sony cut back on PC games, or is this a win-win for everyone?