Those of you who are PC gamers might have rejoiced to see Sony start to support the platform. There is a long line of PlayStation exclusives that could see a launch on the platform, but currently, there are no plans from Sony to change their PC release strategy. Therefore, it remains uncertain which games will eventually launch on the platform.
Microsoft offers a very different strategy when it comes to their first-party releases. We know that when a game launches, it will be available on both Xbox consoles and PC. Again, that’s perfect for PC players. However, what you don’t see is Sony following this trend. Instead, they have been offering their games exclusively on the PlayStation console for at least a year. It was only around after that point that Sony decided to bring it to the PC platform.
Thanks to VGC, we’re learning that Sony has brought this topic up with investors. The PlayStation studio’s boss, Hermen Hulst, spoke about how they plan their releases. According to Hermen Hulst, Sony is considering which franchises to bring to new audiences from consoles. Currently, the focus appears to be on ensuring that players receive the optimal experience, which is partly dependent on the performance and quality of their hardware.
It’s important to realize that we’re really thoughtful about bringing our franchises off console to reach new audiences and that we’re taking a very measured, very deliberate approach in doing that. Particularly on the single-player side, our tentpole titles, they’re such a differentiator.
The point of differentiation, I should say, for the PlayStation console, is that they will showcase the performance and the quality of the hardware. So we want to ensure that players get the best experience from these titles. We’re very thoughtful about how and if and how we bring these titles to other platforms. – Hermen Hulst
Ultimately, it looks like we’ll probably still see some of these big game releases from Sony. However, we’re unlikely to see a new shift in releasing these games on the PC platform until they capitalize on the sales and engagement on their console platform first.
In other related news, during the same investor’s presentation, there were finally some new comments on the PlayStation 5 successor. Although we didn’t learn much, Sony did finally bring up a comment regarding the PlayStation 6 console. It appears that there is still some internal discussion about what the PS6 will offer. However, it doesn’t look like we will see a significant shift from the traditional hardware releases Sony has been known for so far.
