They’ve come around to get their gigantic collection of Ratchet and Clank plushies. Their dad’s in the car, so you don’t want to cause a fuss. Still, as they hastily pack a cuddly Clank away in a carrier bag, you can’t help but ask. Was it something I said? They turn to you, tears welling in their eyes. I just want to keep my big singleplayer games exclusive for a little bit, they say. They think doing so will be good for them. But we have such a good thing going with the likes of Helldivers 2, you protest. The decision’s made, says their dad, who’s poked his head in the door to make sure everything’s going ok.
You reluctantly meet his gaze. His eyes, the eyes of PlayStation Studios CEO Hermen Hulst, are cold and emotionless. You try not to wonder whether he didn’t like you very much from the start.
They leave and soon you see a post on the socials. “PlayStation studio business CEO Hermen Hulst told staff in a town hall Monday morning that the company’s narrative singleplayer games will now be PlayStation exclusive,” it reads. Damn it, Bloomberg blogger Jason Schreier, why must you report on my love life? To be fair, as you – a sentient personification of the PC platform – sit there in your pants with a five o’clock shadow, you have to hand it to him. He reported this was on the cards back in March, after all.
At least you still have already released or announced PC versions of Death Stranding 2 and Kena: Scars of Kosmora, but your hopes of giving the likes of Ghost of Yōtei, Saros, or Marvel’s Wolverine a go without firing up one of Sony’s game boxes look to have gone up in flames. God of War Sons of Sparta, the God of War Trilogy Remake, and Naughty Dog’s Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet are other games this new stance will likely bar from PC, while any big online games Sony want to get off the ground will still make the trek over.
Back in March, Schreier reported that “a faction within PlayStation has also expressed concern that releasing their games on PC risks damaging the console’s brand and will hurt sales of the PlayStation 5 and its successors.” As we’ve seen rigorously debated with Xbox over the past few years, it’s a question of whether these console makers prioritise trying to drag people over to their hardware or go for the biggest overall numbers possible by maximising the amount of places the games produced within their fiefdoms are available either at or relatively close to release.
Personally, I’d be a lot more bummed out about Ghost of Yōtei not hitting PC if Assassin’s Creed Shadows hadn’t given me plenty of Sengoku period Japanese open-world adventuring last year. Saros and Marvel’s Wolverine are more compelling cases, but unlike Ghost of Tsushima, I’m embarassingly yet to get around to giving either Returnal or Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man games a proper go. Were I missing out on new MotorStorms or Wipeouts, it’d be a different story.
Ah well. Best find something to fill that newly plushie-free space.
