Sony May Limit PC Ports Of Key PlayStation Games In Big Console Strategy Shift

Amidst drastic shifts from Xbox and the wider (PC) hardware market, Sony is reportedly considering a pivot away from its more recent strategy of eventually porting its single-player catalog to PC.

As-is, Sony first-party exclusives already trend toward a delay of at least a year before a PC port releases, making most titles merely timed exclusives for PlayStation consoles. Marvel's Spider-Man, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and Spider-Man 2 have all seen delayed PC ports, as have Ghost of Tsushima, Death Stranding and its sequel, God of War (2014) and Ragnarok, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, The Last Of Us Part 1 and Part 2, and so on.

That's not always the case, though. Some single-player games under the PlayStation Studios umbrella have seen simultaneous PC releases, such as Lost Soul Aside. However, those are typically indie fare compared to PlayStation's staple AAA franchises.

Sony's strategy of porting single player titles to PC may be coming to an end, though. As for why Sony may be doing this, there are several potential reasons. One is simply to drive up sales of PlayStation consoles by making them the only place to play in-demand PlayStation games, as is the standard console exclusivity model. Xbox has seemingly abandoned that model, but could pick it back up now that it's under new leadership. Nintendo has never strayed from it, and in fact is quite militant against emulation of its consoles on PC, much less official cross-platform releases.

Keeping value on PlayStation hardware is the most likely explanation (if the rumor is true), and with hardware pricing sure to increase for at least the next year (perhaps more), driving players to buy a PlayStation instead of a gaming PC could be the objective here. Live service games like Helldivers are a different story—in those cases, maximizing concurrent players regardless of platform is a near-objective boon, and Sony doesn't seem to have any plans to stop those ports.

Death Stranding 2 could mark the end of an era for PlayStation-to-PC ports, making the future uncertain for PC-locked players who want to play sequels to games they already own.

But where are these rumors coming from? Mostly the words of esteemed gaming journalist and industry insider Jason Schreier and comments he made on the Triple Click podcast. In a follow-up comment on a resulting Resetera thread, Jason stated that "it's not speculation, but sometimes topics come up on the show before I'm quite ready to publish a story about them. More to come soon, I'm sure."

If these rumors wind up being true, Marvel's Wolverine is expected to be the first PlayStation Studios title to remain exclusive to PlayStation, side-stepping a PC release. The long-standing absence of an official Bloodborne port to PC or PlayStation 5 also leans in favor of this, though that game being on the backburner so long could mean that other factors are at play.