Shawn Layden, former President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, recently discussed and defended PlayStation's past strategy of bringing its titles to PC. Layden stated that while console exclusives retain their value, allowing players on other platforms to experience these IPs after a certain period also helps broaden brand influence.
"My thought at the time was, frankly, PC wasn't about making money. It was about, 'How do I get my intellectual property in front of people who would not normally see it? How do I get the world of 'Horizon' in front of people who are not in the PlayStation ecosystem?'" he explained. "Not necessarily because they're going to buy a PlayStation, I'm not that crazy. But when we take our IP to other mediums, whether it's film, television, comic books, or whatever form… you need to get as many people as possible to know the character, to know the story."
"If you're only focused on the PlayStation player base, only telling those stories to them, and then trying to take it from that platform to other mediums, that's a very big leap," Layden further added. "If someone is willing to wait 18 months for a title to come to PC, we haven't lost that sale; they weren't going to buy the hardware anyway."
However, these comments emerge as Sony is reportedly preparing to adjust its PC publishing strategy. Moving forward, narrative-driven single-player games such as "Marvel's Wolverine," "Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet," and "God of War: Laufey" will no longer launch on PC, with the platform primarily reserved for live-service titles.
Industry observers suggest that PlayStation may have concluded that inconsistent PC sales performance struggled to justify porting costs, leading the company to refocus on its console exclusive advantages.