As first shared on social media by Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, the announcement was reportedly made by Herman Hulst, CEO, Studio Business Group, Sony Interactive Entertainment, during a town hall on Monday.
Of note, Schreier's report specifies that it is "narrative single-player games" that will no longer be seen on PC moving forward. That leaves room for Sony's live-service initiatives to continue to release on the platform.
However, that does mean that recently-released titles like Ghost of Yotei and Saros, plus future titles like Marvel's Wolverine and Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet will not release on PC down the line. Instead, they will remain on PlayStation 5 hardware.
Then when their first party exclusive single player games not generating enough profit or returns they will revert to pc port strategy again lol flip flopping.
Shuhei said recently:
"If they were releasing new AAA games day one on other platforms, I don’t think that’s a good strategy for platform holder like PlayStation. I’m not seeing any proof of them changing their strategy this generation but if they are changing its going to be interesting how they are able to maintain the investment on the big budget games on the first party side going forward"
Former PlayStation Head of Worldwide Studios, the legendary Shuhei Yoshida, has been in the news lately after his appearance at ALT Games event in Australia. He shared many insights about his departure from PlayStation, but he also discussed a lot more; especially the state of the gaming industry, the ballooning development budgets and talked about PlayStation’s strategy for PC releases.
Speaking during an interview with Powerhouse Museum’s ALT. Games Festival, Yoshida said he always felt big budget = safer games because people loved blockbusters, amazing visuals, and story driven experiences that felt expensive. However, in the last five years the budget for AAA games has ballooned so much that publishers are now realizing how unsustainable it is.
"So, in PS4 days still we are making AAA games with big budget. I somehow felt the bigger the budget, the safer in some strange way. Creating bigger, better-looking games that people are asking for. In the past in kind of worked, you know, business wise. But in the last five or so years publishers and developers must have realized that model may not be sustainable"
I feel Sony would bring back single player PC games if Sony is not making enough money as expected from only selling their single player games on PlayStations.
While the balloning dev cost is a major core problem , The other core problems with sony first party games are they killed all their great past game ips by no longer making them, chasing GaaS trend, they killed their first party japan based game dev studio (japan based game dev can produce games at a much lower cost) and they need more genre variety. Sony first party games are more ore less the same now, cinematic action game. In the past the have jrpgs , sjrpgs, tactical shooters, third person action/shooter/stealth games, action adventure games, unique games, platfomers, etc. They need to start making cheaper varied games instead of just super expensive cinematic action games. And Cheaper games can still have great cinematic fully voiced cutscenes too with smart budget management.
