When Xbox announced that some of its games would be coming to PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 (Sea of Thieves or Hi-Fi Rush, among others), the gaming industry trembled with a clear message: the era of exclusivity is over, it’s time for cross-platform games.
And alongside Xbox, many of us were hoping that Sony would take the same direction, especially considering the policy of the Japanese company in the last four years, in which they have been releasing some of their great PS4 and PS5 games on PC. Now, the new CEO of the PlayStation division has clarified the future of the brand a bit and has left us quite confused.
The senior vice president and head of PlayStation Studios, Hermen Hulst, who will be appointed co-CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, has revealed that in the future PlayStation will release games as a service on PlayStation 5 and PC. Just like it happened with Helldivers 2.
“Indeed, we are going to bring our titles to the PC platform and we have a dual approach,” Hulst said. “Regarding games as a service, we will release our titles simultaneously, that is, on the same day and at the same time on PlayStation 5 and PC,” he explains. We can deduce that they will do the same with their beloved Destiny, now that they have acquired Bungie.
But the big triple A games of history and action will only come to PS5
Hulst added that they are taking a different approach with their narrative single-player games. The strategy of releasing those games later on PC is for PC players to buy a PlayStation console in order to play the sequels.
“But with our flagship titles, our narrative single-player titles, which are… as you have seen in the presentation, the backbone of what PlayStation Studios has done in recent years and in our history, we take a more strategic approach,” explains Hermen Hulst.
This translates to the fact that triple A games will continue to arrive on PC with years of delay, as they believe that this encourages computer gamers to buy a PS5, since they won’t want to wait 2 or 3 years between the release on PS5 and the PC port.
“We have great hopes of being able to attract new players to PlayStation in general, but also to the PlayStation platforms in particular,” concluded the co-CEO of PlayStation.
It seems that Sony has chosen the most difficult path to succeed, as has been demonstrated throughout modern history, where becoming multiplatform is bringing more benefits and business than ever. We will see if it works for PlayStation.
