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PC gamers who had hopes of playing Ghost of Yotei sometime in the future will have to keep hoping. Sony is reportedly ending its plans to bring more PlayStation exclusives to PC, although it hasn’t yet given a reason why.
Sony will no longer port its PlayStation exclusives to PC, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. The company didn’t provide any reasons why it will stop releasing its games for PC, but the report says it could change its stance sometime in the future.
Sony didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Why did Sony change its mind on porting its games to PC?
A likely reason for the shift in strategy is the global memory shortage.
The surge in RAM prices has made hardware manufacturers rethink their strategies in recent months. Sony reportedly delayed the PlayStation 6 release to 2029 due to the shortage, meaning the PS5’s life cycle would last nine years instead of the seven-year cycles of the PS3 and PS4. A longer lifecycle would require Sony to sell more PS5 consoles, and console exclusives would help, especially as its competitors shift their focus.
Asha Shar, the new Xbox boss, confirmed on Thursday that the next Xbox console, codenamed Project Helix, will play PC games as well as Xbox games. This would hamper Sony’s exclusivity strategy. Also, Valve is set to release its Steam Machine later this year after it was delayed due to the shortage. This new hardware will play only PC games, but it’s designed to be set up in the living room, connected to a TV. This puts the Steam Machine in direct competition with the PS5.
Valve’s upcoming Steam Machine will make it easier to play PC games on a living room TV.
Video games as a whole are also facing a shift in consumer demand, according to a new industry analysis by Epyllion. Money typically reserved for video games is now being spent on other things, such as gambling, crypto and pornography.
Recent sales data also shows that PlayStation exclusives have not been selling well on PC, GameIndustry.biz reports. Since Sony delays the PC release of its exclusives by a couple of years, sales of those titles aren’t as strong, suggesting that interest in those games was already satisfied when they came out on PlayStation.
There may be other factors Sony considered when making this decision, but it’s clear that the current state of the hardware market and changing gamer demands are behind this change in strategy.
Watch this: The RAM Shortage Could Mean Higher Prices for PC Gamers This Year
What PlayStation exclusive did Sony port to PC?
The first PlayStation exclusive to make the jump to PC was Horizon Zero Dawn back in 2020. Other games followed, usually years after they were first released for PlayStation, except for Helldivers 2, which was released on both platforms at the same time. These include:
- Marvel’s Spider-Man
- Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
- Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
- Days Gone
- Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves
- Horizon Forbidden West
- Returnal
- Helldivers 2
- The Last of Us Part 1
- The Last of Us Part 2
- God of War
- God of War Ragnarök
- Ghost of Tsushima
What are the last PlayStation games heading to PC?
Marathon was released for PC on Thursday, and while it’s not thought of as a PlayStation exclusive, it was developed by Bungie, which is owned by Sony. Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is a Sony-published game that is being developed by Arc System Works, and it’s still set for release on PS5 and PC.
