Report: PlayStation changed first-party single-player PC strategy due to lack of revenue

Platform holder PlayStation reportedly has changed its strategy regarding first-party titles on PC, partly due to the fact that they weren’t generating enough revenue.

That’s according to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, who posted on ResetEra that Hermen Hulst, the CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Business Group, told staff in a town hall that it had changed its strategy for PlayStation titles on PC for a few reasons.

“I guess they’re not going to lay this out publicly, but there’s no ambiguity in their strategy,” Schreier wrote.

“During a town hall a few weeks ago, Hermen Hulst told staff that their single-player narrative games will be PlayStation only, and he explained that they were inconsistent with their PC releases, they didn’t make enough money, and they want to keep their IP aligned to their own platform.”

Schreier was responding to a post on the forum regarding comments made by Sony Interactive Entertainment’s CEO, Hideaki Nishino, in an interview with Japanese games magazine Famitsu, in which the executive was asked about the shift in strategy for PlayStation IP on PC.

“We’ve always determined platform selection based on the characteristics of each title,” he said.

“If releasing a title on PC would maximise the gaming experience, we’ll continue to consider that option. Our current main policy is that, for single-player games developed in-house, we will further refine the value of the gaming experience that PlayStation can offer. At the same time, we believe it is important for live-service games to reach a wider audience through online multiplayer, so we continue to view releases on both PS5 and PC as the standard. Regardless of the platform, we will make decisions based on the principle of delivering the best possible gaming experience that maximises each title’s unique features.”

This follows reports that Sony had decided to stop bringing its first-party titles to PC earlier this year. That information appears to have come from the same town hall that Schreier mentioned in his post.

As Nishino said, the plan appears to be for live-service titles to come to PC, still.

This news comes alongside Microsoft also trying to decide what its own plan is for exclusive titles. Speaking at Summer Games Fest last week, CCO Matt Booty said that this will be decided on a “case-by-case basis”, later adding that live-service titles – as with PlayStation – will be multiplatform.