The most valuable PlayStation games pivot back to exclusivity

Heated discussions about this have been held online pretty much daily since Bloomberg‘s Jason Schreier published a report to that effect back in March, but it’s now as close to official as we’re probably going to get: Sony has seemingly weighed its options, made up its mind and is now planning to keep its most valuable games – the narrative, cinematic, single-player ones – exclusive to PlayStation. This means that there will be no PC versions of titles such as Ghost of Yotei, Saros, Marvel’s Wolverine or Intergalactic, although Sony will continue to offer online multiplayer titles – such as Marathon, Horizon Hunters Gathering or Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls – on both PlayStation and PC systems.

The news comes from Schreier himself, who posted about an internal PlayStation Studios meeting or memo where its CEO, Hermen Hulst, announced the change to Sony’s game developers. The company is not expected to make an official announcement to consumers about this strategic shift, but it will probably be mentioned – and maybe explained, in one way or another – to Sony’s shareholders during the next Business Segment Meeting at some point in late May or early June. This pivot back to PlayStation exclusivity has been telegraphed several times since the Sony and Sony Interactive Entertainment leadership changes last year, so it’s not that big of a surprise it’s finally happening.

The possible reasons why Sony chose to focus on PlayStation for its most popular games going forward are many and varied but this is likely more about the future than about the past. Yes, most PC ports of major PlayStation hits did not sell as well as Sony probably hoped, but some did OK and the company might not have minded collecting the extra revenue from more such ports if not for two upcoming products: Valve’s Steam Machine and Microsoft’s next Xbox, code-named Project Helix. Both will be offering PC games in the living room in a console-like manner, which puts them in direct competition with the PlayStation5 and the upcoming PlayStation6.

Sony now feels that the extra revenue from the PC port sales of past PlayStation hits is simply not worth the risk of weakening its own platform by allowing its most desirable games to be playable on competing systems. The same goes for the upcoming PlayStation6 portable: Sony obviously wishes to make this as desirable a product as it possibly can, so it would help if the most important upcoming PlayStation games were not playable on any old handheld device out there based on PC hardware (including the next Steam Deck and third party portable versions of Project Helix).

To be clear, the company is probably right to make this decision: its PlayStation operation is responsible for anything between 32% and 36% of Sony’s overall revenue, so it simply has to be protected. Sony Interactive Entertainment may be making most of its money through game and content sales that third parties are publishing on its platforms, but a huge percentage of consumers get a PlayStation in order to play the latest entries of its iconic franchises or similar new ones. So it’s actually the company’s first-party titles that get millions of consumers through the door first, hence the future importance of game exclusivity.

As is usually the case, opinions online about Sony’s decision are divided. A lot of PC gamers are disappointed that titles like Saros or Intergalactic – of genres that are traditionally right up their alley – won’t be made available on Steam or EGS, while many PlayStation fans seem excited that Sony’s focus is coming back to exclusive single-player productions for their current or future systems. Whether the company changes its mind again about this at some point remains to be seen but, as things stand right now, it is admittedly the kind of decision that makes sense for Sony. Will Microsoft, against all odds, follow suit? Who doesn’t like a nice surprise every now and then?