Former PlayStation Head Defends PC Ports, Pushes Back Against Strategy Shift Rumors

It was recently rumored that PlayStation would be moving away from publishing PC ports of its mainline first-party single-player games, which came with the implication that Sony would not port the upcoming Marvel’s Wolverine game to PC. Speaking at a recent ALT Games Festival event in Australia, Shuhei Yoshida, Sony’s former president of Sony Interactive Entertainment, commented on the PlayStation exclusive situation and how PC ports impact Sony’s gaming portfolio and financials in his view. Yoshida is of the opinion that PC ports are largely a positive move for Sony, and that they don’t meaningfully detract from console hardware sales or game sales on consoles.

Instead, Yoshida says that Sony’s PC ports could help recoup some of the initial game design and development costs—presumably because games usually get a bump in sales when they launch on other platforms, and because developing a new game is far more costly than porting an existing game to a new platform. The latter is especially true with modern hardware, which all share similar x86 platform specifications, with the exception of systems like the Nintendo Switch 2 and Valve’s upcoming Steam Frame. He also goes on to say that he is “not seeing any proof of them (Sony) changing their strategy this generation, but if they are changing, it’s going to be interesting how they are able to maintain the investment on big budget games.” On the topic of AAA game budgets, Yoshida comments that the ever-increasing budgets in the AAA industry don’t seem sustainable. The full interview with Shuhei Yoshida on YouTube follows.

The ex-Sony exec also touched on how AAA games seem to be demanding more and more of the player, and that from his personal perspective, if a game is too long, he feels as though he cannot complete it and simply won’t touch it as a result. He also spoke about the indie side of the industry and how multi-platform is the norm, but releasing on PC first can be a benefit for both game developers and console ecosystems. His reasoning is that, while multi-platform helps get more hype and eyes on a launch, PC allows for early access launches, which give developers time to iron out bugs and add content before the full-scale release and console launches. That way, consoles get a more complete version of the game on consoles.

We recently saw Yoshida’s point about PC ports driven home by the release of Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, where the PC release boosted the game to over 2 million copies sold, after selling 425,000 units on PC shortly after the port was released.