PC gamers are telling Sony to keep its PlayStation 5. After Bloomberg's Jason Schreier reported that PlayStation studio boss Hermen Hulst confirmed in a Monday town hall that narrative single-player games will stay PS5 exclusive, the PC gaming community responded with a collective shrug and a simple message: we'll just play something else.
"Why would a PC gamer buy a $600 PS5 for a few games?" one Reddit user asked. "Do you know what happens instead? The PC gamer simply ignores Sony games and plays other PC games." The policy locks upcoming titles including Saros, Ghost of Yotei, Marvel's Wolverine, and Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet to PlayStation. Plans to port Ghost of Yotei to PC have been canceled.
Sony's math assumes exclusivity drives hardware sales. But a PS5 now costs $600 after March price hikes. The PS5 Pro runs $900. PlayStation Plus just got more expensive this week, with Sony citing "ongoing market conditions."
"I skipped buying a PS5 and I don't feel like I've missed out," one PC gamer said on Reddit. The timing works against Sony. Its most acclaimed studio, Naughty Dog, hasn't shipped a new game in six years. The company's single-player output has slowed to roughly two or three non-multiplayer, non-sports titles per year. PC Gamer's Morgan Park described the "prestige" Sony game as "an endangered species."
Former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida warned in April that Sony would struggle to recoup first-party game budgets without PC ports. "Releasing games on PC after a couple of years must have helped recoup the investment of these big budget games," Yoshida said.
Circana's Mat Piscatella expressed concern about the decision's viability. "I hope -- well, for everyone's sake, really -- that 'ongoing global market conditions' drastically improve rather quickly or I expect this decision will be reversed sooner rather than later," he said.
Some in the industry see a different motivation. Peter Dalton, Head of Technology at Bluepoint Games, suggested Sony may be responding to the rise of a Steam-based console ecosystem, pointing to Valve's recently announced Steam Machine.
Bloomberg previously reported that the prospect of PlayStation games running on the next Xbox (which will run PC games) may have also influenced Sony's return to exclusives. For the PC crowd that can play roughly 99% of new games without a console, the practical impact is minimal. "As much as I love the Horizon series I just won't be playing part three I guess," one gamer wrote.
"There's no way I'd buy a console for the few games I'd be interested in."
Another summed up the sentiment more bluntly: "This isn't going to magically make me buy a PlayStation. It's just going to make me not buy your games."
