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[Bloomberg] Sony Pulls Back From PlayStation Games on PC (Ghost of Yotei port and other internally developerd games scrapped)

Bandai Namco have been publishing / releasing older Japan Studio titles on PC, like Everybody's Golf, Freedom Wars, and Patapon. I wonder if they could still release other stuff. There was one port of an unkown game in the work, so I wonder where that leaves that and if that's affected:


Gravity Rush 2 is stuck on ps4 at 30 fps with draw distance issues, let us have at least this on PC and then I'd be fine :messenger_pensive:

It's been a while since we last heard from this initiative, and that rumor is extremely misleading.
 
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My guess is that they will do this and stick to it for now until PS6 is 3 years old and has sold really well. And then they will have Nixxes start back up like they did this gen. Rinse and repeat every gen.

So their exclusives will help them sell consoles for launch and years later, then as they prepare for the next next gen they eek out more sales for their older games on PC.

That's actually not a bad idea.
 
While I understand the emotion, I just don't think it's logical to think Sony were ever going to release games new to a platform at a bargain basement price. Being $10 less expensive at launch on Steam should have already raised eyebrows to their PlayStation audience not to mention devaluing those properties which probably wouldn't make Marvel happy. It all just feels so poorly thought out.
I guess trying to please everyone is what bit them in the arse really. If they wanted to take PC seriously they would've launched games sooner, and cheaper. The sales would've been much higher, but they'd risk pissing off not just their zealots, but their core audience too. The way they did it resulted in lower sales, but a safe and steady bonus profits from cheap ports and I bet most playstation gamers didn't even know they sold on steam as well. But maybe for Sony the optics weren't great with their big flagship titles only selling in relatively small numbers.
 
I just don't see it being about the cost as this is their most profitable generation

It just feels like a failed initiative. I've been saying in these types of threads for the last year or so that Sony's been awfully quiet about their porting initiatives. I really think they expected to sell millions upon millions of units of their tent pole releases and had they, we'd probably be talking about Sony doing day-and-date for PC/PlayStation. At least Days Gone being one of the bigger success stories will never not be funny for a lot of reasons.
 
It's been a while since we last heard from this initiative, and that rumor is extremely misleading.
Sad Pikachu GIF
 
Bandai Namco have been publishing / releasing older Japan Studio titles on PC, like Everybody's Golf, Freedom Wars, and Patapon. I wonder if they could still release other stuff. There was one port of an unkown game in the work, so I wonder where that leaves that and if that's affected:


Gravity Rush 2 is stuck on ps4 at 30 fps with draw distance issues, let us have at least this on PC and then I'd be fine :messenger_pensive:

Black Widow Avengers GIF
 
And no, nobody talks about Sony or Nintendo on PC due to "profit margins" or lack there of.
It definitely has been talked about. Knowing how much these games cost to make, it made sense they'd want to try and reduce risk by porting to PC.
 
Weird how much SONY tribalism there is in this thread. People getting off on other people not being able to play a game on an underpowered $500 box.
The reality is that no PC gamer will go into the SONY ecosystem (ie. PSN and microtransaction, where they make a lot of $$), at most they will buy singleplayer SONY exclusives and everything else on PC.
If someone is deciding PC vs. Playstation, there I can see this MAYBE moving the needle. But the reality is that SONY exclusives are so few and far in between and most god stuff is multi platform anyway, not sure a handful of cinematic games makes sense to shell out for a console.

It does suck that Yotei may not be coming to PC, same for Saros, but likely the main driver is that their games just don't sell that well on PC?
It's too bad, I find Ghost of Tsushima quite good. Perhaps they will reconsider, or perhaps these "sources" are largely speculative.
 
That's actually not a bad idea.

Once they release the rumored "PS5 handheld" and PS6 there is no way they are going back to releasing their big games on Steam as Valve becomes their main competitor for good

They could do it on their own PC store, but they know PC gamers don't want to use another launcher

So it's gonna be pointless either way...
 
I guess trying to please everyone is what bit them in the arse really. If they wanted to take PC seriously they would've launched games sooner, and cheaper. The sales would've been much higher, but they'd risk pissing off not just their zealots, but their core audience too. The way they did it resulted in lower sales, but a safe and steady bonus profits from cheap ports and I bet most playstation gamers didn't even know they sold on steam as well. But maybe for Sony the optics weren't great with their big flagship titles only selling in relatively small numbers.
Doing day and date means rendering your entire business meaningless because you just became a third party publisher and people respond to that.

So if the cost of being "serious" with PC is making your PlayStation business go up in smoke, yea it's not worth it.
 
My guess is that they will do this and stick to it for now until PS6 is 3 years old and has sold really well. And then they will have Nixxes start back up like they did this gen. Rinse and repeat every gen.

So their exclusives will help them sell consoles for launch and years later, then as they prepare for the next next gen they eek out more sales for their older games on PC.
I doubt it they don't have an early adopter problem they have a problem with mid to late adoption which is driven by momentum and FOMO. It won't be any easier with component and hardware costs going up next gen

If they want to ever get near Switch numbers they can't be multiplatform
 
Doing day and date means rendering your entire business meaningless because you just became a third party publisher and people respond to that.

So if the cost of being "serious" with PC is making your PlayStation business go up in smoke, yea it's not worth it.
Even selling the late ports at a lower price would've helped enormously
 
...five years down the road with nothing released, Sony shuts down FromSoftware and Elden Ring 2 is denied to every gamer.

mission-accomplished.gif
Short after closing of the studio Jason Scheier on bsky.social:
- FromSoftware pitched Bloodborne 2 to Sony




Sony
m9L9PDK3YQckuHeO.png

"Got Eem!"
 
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Yeah, that post started well and then inexplicably turned into pure cope alternate reality bullshit.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed God of War, Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us which are good 7/10 games.

At the end of the day the best AAA games are multi-plats. There was no CDPR, Warhorse, Larian, FROM or Rockstar level studio hiding in Sony's closet. What they had to offer generally was the gaming equivalent to Marvel movies and life will go on without them.
If anything, Steam users regarded most of those games similarly to what you consider the pinnacle of gaming.

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And with some ports being borderline broken at that.
Unless we're equating popularity with quality. And sorry, while not perfect Steam rating is still the most reliable score system in place. For sure more than your alternate reality score for some of those games.

There's no question those releases for the most part flopped in terms of both sales and popularity. But to pretend those PC games who played them didn't like them or "exposed them as average Marvel stuff" is nonsense that has no place in a serious gaming board.
 
It wouldn't make any sense to exclude PC from a GaaS game
Why not? In terms of protecting the ecosystem - GaaS games would be the ones you would really want to keep on your hardware as they require a subscription. So you lose subscription revenue if you lose those players, and also the players on your ecosystem are worse off because they have to pay for something that is free on PC.
The reason they stay on PC is nothing to do with it making sense and everything to do with money. If SP and MP/GaaS success on PC was reversed - you would probably see Sony pulling back from GaaS and doubling down on SP on PC.
 
Why not? In terms of protecting the ecosystem - GaaS games would be the ones you would really want to keep on your hardware as they require a subscription. So you lose subscription revenue if you lose those players, and also the players on your ecosystem are worse off because they have to pay for something that is free on PC.
The reason they stay on PC is nothing to do with it making sense and everything to do with money. If SP and MP/GaaS success on PC was reversed - you would probably see Sony pulling back from GaaS and doubling down on SP on PC.

You need the largest possible amount of active players to keep a GaaS alive...

If you lock it to a single platform you lose engagement....

You don't need no fucking engagement with other players around the world to play a single player game...

That's why, Sherlock

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They have cancelled almost all of their gaas games.
No. They released so far:
  1. MLB The Show (+ soon MLB The Show Mobile)
  2. Gran Turismo 7
  3. Firewall Ultra
  4. Destiny 2 (+Destiny Rising)
  5. Helldivers 2
  6. Concord
  7. Midnight Murder Club
They release this or next year, all of them day one on PC:
  1. Marathon
  2. Marvel Tokon
  3. 4loop
  4. Convallaria
  5. Horizon Hunters Gathering (+Steel Frontiers)
  6. Team LFG's game
  7. Fairgame$
So they'll end having 14 IPs with GaaS vs the 12 or (10+) originally mentioned with a bit more than a year after the original (later removed) deadline, not counting the 4 mobile games, because it would add one more (Ratchet & Clank Ranger Rumble).

They cancelled the Deviation new IP, London Studio new IP, Bend new IP, TLOU Online and GoW. Twisted Metal and Spider-Man never were greenlighted. In fact the Spider-Man one pretty likely was a non-greenlighted pitch for a Spider-Man 2 post launch MP mode like GoT Legends, when looking at the only Insomniac roadmap that mentions something related to Spider-Man MP out of the several leaked Insomniac roadmaps.

Where's that user that game me a huge list of Playstation games that will for sure go to PC? He kept showing the same damn list over and over again just a week lmao
Me. The list of the games above will release day on PC plus like Kena 2 and Star Wars KOTOR remake. Then there's the Death Stranding 2 game. Sony will have a record amount of PC releases for 2026 and 2027, that won't change if they release Yotei and Saros later, or if they'd (something I doubt) cancel their PC ports.

The console business.
Their console business grew to all time record numbers during the PC push and continues growing.
 
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Why not? In terms of protecting the ecosystem - GaaS games would be the ones you would really want to keep on your hardware as they require a subscription. So you lose subscription revenue if you lose those players, and also the players on your ecosystem are worse off because they have to pay for something that is free on PC.
The reason they stay on PC is nothing to do with it making sense and everything to do with money. If SP and MP/GaaS success on PC was reversed - you would probably see Sony pulling back from GaaS and doubling down on SP on PC.

I think the easy answer to "why not" that anyone reasonable can appreciate, is that a larger player pool is beneficial to everyone. If Sony were smart, their GaaS initiatives should have been F2P which would have also killed the PS+ requirement, but that's a story for another day.
 
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I think the easy answer to "why not" that anyone reasonable can appreciate, is that a larger player pool is beneficial to everyone. If Sony were smart, their GaaS initiatives should have been F2P which would have also killed the PS+ requirement, but that's a story for another day.


Season 4 Agree GIF by The Office
 
Weird how much SONY tribalism there is in this thread. People getting off on other people not being able to play a game on an underpowered $500 box.
The reality is that no PC gamer will go into the SONY ecosystem (ie. PSN and microtransaction, where they make a lot of $$), at most they will buy singleplayer SONY exclusives and everything else on PC.
If someone is deciding PC vs. Playstation, there I can see this MAYBE moving the needle. But the reality is that SONY exclusives are so few and far in between and most god stuff is multi platform anyway, not sure a handful of cinematic games makes sense to shell out for a console.

It does suck that Yotei may not be coming to PC, same for Saros, but likely the main driver is that their games just don't sell that well on PC?
It's too bad, I find Ghost of Tsushima quite good. Perhaps they will reconsider, or perhaps these "sources" are largely speculative.
The stupid thing was years back when Sony started porting games to PC, the theory PS gamers spouted to the net was if Sony did this enough, it'd tease PC gamers to give up their PC and buy a PS5 to play the sequel. Great strategy, the sequels to those heavy hitters came to PC too. LOL

Now the strategy goes back to the exclusivity theory where if PCs dont get the Sony games, it will make them buy a PS5 to play LOU and GOW, or whatever SP game comes out once every 5+ years. Or else a PS gamer will ditch their console and load up on a pricey PC and wait for the new game 1-2 years after launch.

You can see the strategy is all over the place because if exclusives were so important, why do GAAS games come to PC and Xbox? If keeping games locked up in the PS ecosystem is that important for driving gamers to pick up a PS, then make those games exclusive too and a GAAS shooter fan will maybe ditch their hardware and get a PS to play Concord, Marathon, Baseball or Horizon Hunters! Keep the gamers in the ecosystem and get 100% of the mtx cuts. Nope.
 
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I guess trying to please everyone is what bit them in the arse really. If they wanted to take PC seriously they would've launched games sooner, and cheaper. The sales would've been much higher, but they'd risk pissing off not just their zealots, but their core audience too. The way they did it resulted in lower sales, but a safe and steady bonus profits from cheap ports and I bet most playstation gamers didn't even know they sold on steam as well. But maybe for Sony the optics weren't great with their big flagship titles only selling in relatively small numbers.

Soonersnd cheaper, so day one and 20 bucks under the Playstation price would be enough for the PCMR fine folks?

20 dollar or less as 90% of Steam sales maybe

10 bucks forever as Capcom games on Steam to get "high units sales".
 


The PC audience has basically rejected these massive console exclusives. Spiderman 2 sales were absolutely insane. 11 million in a few weeks iirc.

LOL. Maybe PC gamers are based. Or have standards? Spiderman 2 is woke DEI trash. Now do Stellar Blade. Make better games and sales will be fine.
 
We tried to warn the "but it's free money!" posters. The more Sony gave a reason for people to just go PC, the less likely people buy a PlayStation console and put money into their ecosystem. No company is going to risk undermining a $136 billion dollar console business for the sake of a $2.3 billion PC business. And a lot of that came from live service anyway due to the success of Helldivers II, which according to other rumors they are still receptive to releasing on PC.

I've consistently warned that the biggest threat to Sony's business is the PC. Capcom just said that 50% of the sales of their games are coming from PC. It's massive now. Why would Sony fuel their own demise here (and allow their games to be playable on potential competitors' living room machines, like Magnus and Steam Machine)?
This argument would only make sense if Sony started money hatting Resident Evil.
 
Yeah, that post started well and then inexplicably turned into pure cope alternate reality bullshit.


If anything, Steam users regarded most of those games similarly to what you consider the pinnacle of gaming.

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And with some ports being borderline broken at that.
Unless we're equating popularity with quality. And sorry, while not perfect Steam rating is still the most reliable score system in place. For sure more than your alternate reality score for some of those games.

There's no question those releases for the most part flopped in terms of both sales and popularity. But to pretend those PC games who played them didn't like them or "exposed them as average Marvel stuff" is nonsense that has no place in a serious gaming board.
Eh, not really. Steam ratings are binary. You either rate the game positively or negatively. Days Gone having 91.49% Positive Rating doesn't mean it's considered almost as good as Elden Ring. Things like the quality of the port, mtx, or even semi-related shit such as updates no one asked for can tank ratings. The Spider-Man 2 port is just awful, which is why it scored so low. If it had been a good port, its score would e the same as the original.

Hell, I even gave a negative review to Elden Ring because the port was shit and have not changed it despite some From fanboy assholes telling me to do so or From would no longer release their games on PC.
 
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Eh, not really. Steam ratings are binary. You either rate the game positively or negatively. Days Gone having 91.49% Positive Rating doesn't mean it's considered almost as good as Elden Ring. Things like the quality of the port, mtx, or even semi-related shit such as updates no one asked for can tank ratings. The Spider-Man 2 port is just awful, which is why it scored so low. If it had been a good port, its score would e the same as the original.
if I'm reading this right, Spiderman 2 also has massively fewer reviews than Spiderman 1, and neither of them are even remotely close to Cyberpunk etc. That seems like the main takeaway from that image to me :pie_open_mouth:
 
Eh, not really. Steam ratings are binary. You either rate the game positively or negatively. Days Gone having 91.49% Positive Rating doesn't mean it's considered almost as good as Elden Ring. Things like the quality of the port, mtx, or even semi-related shit such as updates no one asked for can tank ratings. The Spider-Man 2 port is just awful, which is why it scored so low. If it had been a good port, its score would e the same as the original.

Trying to use them to gauge quality of games I've never heard of in Fanatical bundles is always an adventure. We've heard of the Nintendo bump in review scores, but let me tell you about visual novels.
 
That's actually not a bad idea.
It is a bad idea. Sony should eliminate the perception that its first-party games are readily available on other platforms. The brand's strength has always been closely tied to exclusivity and a clear identity.

If players on other platforms know the same games will eventually arrive for them, they may simply stop buying PlayStations altogether and just wait indefinitely. They're not being deprived of games—there's no shortage of alternatives to play in the meantime. Ultimately, this is about perception: once the sense of exclusivity fades, so does part of the incentive to invest in the ecosystem.
 
meh its not like pc gamers actually buying these first party exclusive anyway.

im more interested on how sony is going to continue increase their console user market
 
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That's actually not a bad idea.
It's a bad idea. Most people buy consoles only when a library of games is established or when the price goes down.

If Sony believes their games have some influence in bringing people to PlayStation consoles, then they should make them exclusive forever.

But of course, we never know when another dumbass like Jim Ryan will be in charge again.
 
meh its not like pc gamers actually buying these first party exclusive anyway.

im more interested on how sony is going to continue increase their console user market

Affordably priced hardware that can play current games should do it as they'll be the only player in that market. PlayStation and PC will get the lion share of Xbox's userbase that isn't already multi-platform.
 
The stupid thing was years back when Sony started porting games to PC, the theory PS gamers spouted to the net was if Sony did this enough, it'd tease PC gamers to give up their PC and buy a PS5 to play the sequel. Great strategy, the sequels to those heavy hitters came to PC too. LOL

Now the strategy goes back to the exclusivity theory where if PCs dont get the Sony games, it will make them buy a PS5 to play LOU and GOW, or whatever SP game comes out once every 5+ years. Or else a PS gamer will ditch their console and load up on a pricey PC.
You can the strategy is all over the place because if exclusives were so important, why do GAAS games come to PC and Xbox? If keeping games locked up in the PS ecosystem is that important for driving gamers to pick up a PS, then make those games exclusive too and a GAAS shooter fan will maybe ditch their hardware and get a PS to play Concord, Marathon, Baseball or Horizon Hunters!
Definitely agree.
Their strategy for the PS5 was just to make money and not consider the consequences. They had no vision for it
Money Make GIF by Better Call Saul
 
It's a bad idea. Most people buy consoles only when a library of games is established or when the price goes down.

If Sony believes their games have some influence in bringing people to PlayStation consoles, then they should make them exclusive forever.

But of course, we never know when another dumbass like Jim Ryan will be in charge again.

Mostly agree. With digital libraries, backward compatibility, and cross generation support, I'm not sure there is an appropriate wait period that makes sense. Like we talked about a page or two ago, attack that segment in a different way (streaming) that protects your core business.
 
Eh, not really. Steam ratings are binary. You either rate the game positively or negatively. Days Gone having 91.49% Positive Rating doesn't mean it's considered almost as good as Elden Ring. Things like the quality of the port, mtx, or even semi-related shit such as updates no one asked for can tank ratings. The Spider-Man 2 port is just awful, which is why it scored so low. If it had been a good port, its score would e the same as the original.
I am fully aware of that. And yet to my knowledge that it is still unquestionably the best way we have (by far) to evaluate such things. The alternative would be Metacritic for both critic and user? That would be even worse for this argument given how extremely above average those games scored there.
Most Microsoft games received perfect ports, were free of all surrounding nonsense, and were released at the same time as console version. Why some scored substantially lower than any of these?

For the record, on a fundamental level I do NOT believe current games produced by Sony are the "pinnacle of gaming" at all. Last Sony exclusive I bought is Astro Bot, and before that it has been literal years without a purchase after the Ragnarok disappointment.
I don't think there's a single studio anymore within Sony able to produce something on the level of Witcher 3 in terms of writing, or as mature and honest as a Vávra game.
And have zero interest in Naughty Dog future, the only company that I regarded on a similar level as Rockstar, despite the fact the OG The Last of Us is in my top 3 of all time and I recognize a shameful amount of stuff in The Last of Us: Part II hasn't even been matched after 6 years (in a next generation at that).

I'll say though, this Thread has made me consider giving Yōtei a chance.
 
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I don't know how reliable this data is, it's Gemini generated, but it may be approximately correct?
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It seems PC gamers are just less excited about SONY games, maybe because they are overly cinematic, or maybe PC gamers are all anti-DEI edge lords, who knows.
Personally I ignored Sony stuff for a while because of how much walking/talking bits there are, a lot of their games just started feeling likely samey slogs and the "movie-game" fascination may have just worn off on people.
 
The stupid thing was years back when Sony started porting games to PC, the theory PS gamers spouted to the net was if Sony did this enough, it'd tease PC gamers to give up their PC and buy a PS5 to play the sequel. Great strategy, the sequels to those heavy hitters came to PC too. LOL

Now the strategy goes back to the exclusivity theory where if PCs dont get the Sony games, it will make them buy a PS5 to play LOU and GOW, or whatever SP game comes out once every 5+ years. Or else a PS gamer will ditch their console and load up on a pricey PC.

You can the strategy is all over the place because if exclusives were so important, why do GAAS games come to PC and Xbox? If keeping games locked up in the PS ecosystem is that important for driving gamers to pick up a PS, then make those games exclusive too and a GAAS shooter fan will maybe ditch their hardware and get a PS to play Concord, Marathon, Baseball or Horizon Hunters!

PC gamers can remain in their pit and not see a 200m game ever again. Legally, at least 😂

Everybody will be happy, PC gamers with their indies, isometric and Ubi games as AAA, and Playstation fans with their exclusives.

Based PC gamers may not have bought a lot of those games, but they were fire in torrent sites. Maybe Sony wasn't so happy with that "1 buying, 3 pirating, but Steam concurrent players numbers is huge" situation.
 
I don't know how reliable this data is, it's Gemini generated, but it may be approximately correct?
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It seems PC gamers are just less excited about SONY games, maybe because they are overly cinematic, or maybe PC gamers are all anti-DEI edge lords, who knows.
Personally I ignored Sony stuff for a while because of how much walking/talking bits there are, a lot of their games just started feeling likely samey slogs and the "movie-game" fascination may have just worn off on people.
PC sales will always be gimped as those SP games come to PC anywhere from 1-4 years later. So the excitement is long gone. If PC got day one sales, they'd be much more.
 
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