Sony's teams want to continue to bring their flagship titles to PC but the program will be far from Xbox's.
PlayStation is starting to make a name for itself among PC gamers. Sony announced the start of hostilities in March 2020 and set the pace with the release of Horizon Zero Dawn in August of the same year. Since then, a whole bunch of cult titles have arrived on Steam and Epic Games Store. It is now possible to play God of War, Days Gone or Spider-Man Remastered without owning a PlayStation console.
Soon, Sackboy: A Big Adventure and Spider-Man Miles Morales will join this flourishing catalog. In an interview with Reuters, Hermen Hulst, CEO of PlayStation Studios, expressed his willingness to continue investing in this market :
"Future investments in areas that will strengthen our expansion into PC, mobile and live service games is absolutely a possibility for us."
Until now, games published on PC have arrived long after their initial release on PlayStation. And despite new investments, this doesn't seem to be about to change. So gamers who dreamed of a system similar to what Microsoft offers with simultaneous releases can pack up their hopes.
Well spaced out outings
In an interview on Julien Chièze's YouTube channel, Hermen Hulst revealed more details about PlayStation Studios' plans. He then explains :
"I think in the future we'll see at least a year between PlayStation and PC releases, with a possible exception for live service games."
As a reminder, live service games are titles like Fortnite or more recently Overwatch 2 that offer their content for free, in exchange for a battle pass or microtransactions for in-game cosmetics. And inevitably, the nature of these games will push PlayStation to publish them simultaneously on multiple platforms :
"These games are different in nature because the goal is to have a strong community, with strong in-game engagement from the beginning, once the game goes live. So in the case of our live service games we will probably follow a simultaneous release format between the PC and PlayStation."
Sony hopes to release half of its new PlayStation games on PC and mobile by 2025, enough to satisfy gamers who don't want to get their hands on the Japanese manufacturer's still unavailable console.
