Report: Sony single player games exclusive again

[weirdfeline]

It's been rumored for a week or two now that Sony is going to make their single player games exclusive once again, Jason Schreier is now confirming this in Bloomberg.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-04/sony-pulls-back-from-playstation-games-on-pc

Ghost of Yotei will not receive a PC port nor will the upcoming Saros. This seems to be limited to first party games because Death Stranding 2 and Kena 2 are both coming to PC.

Online multiplayer games/live service games such as Marathon and Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls will still be released for PC.

Apparently they are concerned this will hurt console sales if they continue to release on PC, uhhh duh?

Clearly the real reason for this sudden change is that they are mad they don't have a valid reason to shut down Nixxes so they are creating a reason to.

[juanblue85]

Dang its going to suck when Horizon 3 is finally announced and its only going to be for PS5. Dang shame they never released Uncharted Nathan Drake Collection on PC as we only got Legacy of Thieves one.

[bikingjahuty]

I don't pretend to be an industry expert or insider, but it seems like releasing AAA games exclusively for a single platform is no longer a financially viable option. Sure, I don't think Sony should be releasing their first party games on XBOX or Switch 2, but that PC market is expanding and already pretty large. Even if you maintain console exclusivity for a year or so, it's better than never releasing them on PC ever, at least from a financial standpoint.


In a way, I do get where Sony is coming from with this as well. More and more gamers are moving away from consoles entirely, which is obviously bad news for the companies making consoles. We all know XBOX's future is complete toast, however I'm sure Microsoft hardly cares since all the PC gamers are gaming on Windows machines anyways. Nintendo is sort of its own ecosystem and experience, mostly separate from what Sony and Microsoft have been doing for the last two decades. That leaves Sony who's sort of the last man standing. However, I think Sony has really dropped the ball this last gen with making the PS5 a meaningful purchase for exclusive experiences. I remember every previous console having a ton of exclusives, both first and third party. The PS5 however has been mostly lacking in this department with most of its games being multiplats, even when disregarding what's also on the PC.


I guess this just all highlights how precarious the game industry is right now. I read a few weeks ago that something like a third of all game industry employees have been laid off since like 2022 or something. There are other signs the industry is just not healthy at the moment either. I've said this before, but I feel like the whole AAA game model has become somewhat unsustainable. Sure, it works out incredibly well if your game is a mega hit, but if it's anything less than that, your studio faces imminent closure. I think these bigger studios needs to focus more on less expensive, AA games, or even budget games made by small, talented teams. I feel like this would work better than putting all your eggs in one basket and betting the farm on a single game.


Anyhow, now I'm going off on a tangent. But yeah, I don't think it's feasible for Sony to make their first party games exclusive despite me seeing the motivation to do so.

[ssj4yamgeta]

Let 'em. Sony's 1st-party studios don't make a single thing that interests me anymore. The only thing they had was Stellar Blade, but that's going independent now that Shift-Up can afford to self-publish. I lost interest in Horizon after they made Aloy canonically lesbian in the Burning Shores DLC for Forbidden West, a baffling move that had no relevance to the plot and served no purpose other than to push an agenda. Everything else they make is nearly-identical 3rd-person over the shoulder open world slop with the same gameplay loop. First-party exclusives really have become the new shovelware, along with most of what the AAA devs put out these days.

[sworddude]

Hard to say, it works for nintendo for sure, they would lose mad money in the longrun if they where to release their games on pc aswell.

if the games are really good people would be forced to get a console and get in their system instead of buying it for cheap on pc.

game prices are generally higher on console than on pc.

Problem with sony is that they have not been consistent in terms of exclusivity anymore so it would need to be something really longterm for it to pay off again and they would need to stick with it.

[dhaabi]

Let 'em. Sony's 1st-party studios don't make a single thing that interests me anymore. The only thing they had was Stellar Blade, but that's going independent now that Shift-Up can afford to self-publish. I lost interest in Horizon after they made Aloy canonically lesbian in the Burning Shores DLC for Forbidden West, a baffling move that had no relevance to the plot and served no purpose other than to push an agenda. Everything else they make is nearly-identical 3rd-person over the shoulder open world slop with the same gameplay loop. First-party exclusives really have become the new shovelware, along with most of what the AAA devs put out these days.

Yet, Stellar Blade is another third-person action-adventure game albeit one that panders to the male gaze with one-dimensional, overt objectification for no purpose other than that sex sells.

Nevertheless, what kinds of games published by Sony from earlier generations do you like that you think has been abandoned in more recent years? It's not an uncommon opinion you're presenting, but I'm curious since I don't often see people actually elaborate on their view.

[sworddude]

Let 'em. Sony's 1st-party studios don't make a single thing that interests me anymore. The only thing they had was Stellar Blade, but that's going independent now that Shift-Up can afford to self-publish. I lost interest in Horizon after they made Aloy canonically lesbian in the Burning Shores DLC for Forbidden West, a baffling move that had no relevance to the plot and served no purpose other than to push an agenda. Everything else they make is nearly-identical 3rd-person over the shoulder open world slop with the same gameplay loop. First-party exclusives really have become the new shovelware, along with most of what the AAA devs put out these days.

Yet, Stellar Blade is another third-person action-adventure game albeit one that panders to the male gaze with one-dimensional, overt objectification for no purpose other than that sex sells.

Nevertheless, what kinds of games published by Sony from earlier generations do you like that you think has been abandoned in more recent years? It's not an uncommon opinion you're presenting, but I'm curious since I don't often see people actually elaborate on their view.

Stellarblade perhaps went a bit over the top but there ain't anything wrong with making your characters look good besides they where trying to replicate said model the used for her and I think they did a good job. allot of modern western games make female characters ugly or very manly looking these days in which they get backlash from the community. stellarblade gave the finger to that trend hence why people often go to it.

In general asian studio's seem to ignore that trend. It seems to be a checkbox for western game development.

for example this is how rainbow six did 2B nier dlc





This was a super meme example looks nothing like 2B at all looks like an actual man cosplaying as 2B

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TZN0LhdZoI

[ssj4yamgeta]

Yet, Stellar Blade is another third-person action-adventure game albeit one that panders to the male gaze with one-dimensional, overt objectification for no purpose other than that sex sells.

Nevertheless, what kinds of games published by Sony from earlier generations do you like that you think has been abandoned in more recent years? It's not an uncommon opinion you're presenting, but I'm curious since I don't often see people actually elaborate on their view.

And that's a good thing. Overtly sexy women are a welcome change after 10+ years of deliberately ugly designs being pumped out by the western games industry to avoid offending psychologically fragile women. One-dimensional characters work just fine as video game protagonists in anything that isn't a movie game or a JRPG. Link, Leon S. Kennedy, Raiden (MGS series), Doomguy, (Pre-Reboot) Lara Croft, Mario, Donkey Kong, and Dante are all one-dimensional but still beloved video game protagonists. I could list even more if I wanted to. They work because video games are fundamentally different from film or books by virtue of being games. The purpose of a game is to be fun. A game doesn't need to tell a deep story to be fun. The protagonist is just a digital meat suit the player puts on to interact with the environment. They don't need to be deep. Leon and Raiden in particular were designed for the female gaze. Raiden only exists because Kojima was told by a high school girl that Snake was unattractive and she wanted a younger, cuter protagonist in the next game. His cyborg redesigns in MGS4 and Rising are blatant femboy fetish pandering, just look at the high heels built into his cyborg body. It was even more obvious in his first design for Metal Gear Solid: Rising before it was handed over to Platinum and became Rising: Revengeance. Yet the female gaze is fine, according to the industry. I'm really sick of being told that women can have attractive one-dimensional male characters, but men are evil for wanting attractive one-dimensional female characters.

The most damaging thing gamers ever did was trying to get video games recognized as art. After that movement took off, wannabe filmmakers flooded the industry and now everything has to be an interactive movie. Can a movie game be done right? Absolutely, Mafia: The Old Country is a great example of such. It's quick, well-acted, and to the point. But more often than not it's a detriment to the game, such as Hellblade 2's opening where you spend 30-45 minutes just running forward, Red Dead Redemption 2's pointless chores and long, unskippable skinning animations, and The Metal Gear Solid series' excessively long infodumps (especially MGS4, which had an ending cut scene that lasted 2 hours). And Sony has gone all in on the movie game bandwagon, so they've lost me.

Some IPs I loved that Sony abandoned were SOCOM, Resistance, and the Japan Studio works like Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian. Do I want them to bring those back? Hell no. I don't want modern Sony touching those classics with a 10-foot pole. We need to let old franchises die for their own good. The modern games industry is Pet Sematary for video games. Yeah, you can bring them back, but they'll be different, they'll be changed. It won't be them anymore, just something dark wearing their skins. Sometimes, dead is better.

[dhaabi]

Yet, Stellar Blade is another third-person action-adventure game albeit one that panders to the male gaze with one-dimensional, overt objectification for no purpose other than that sex sells.

Nevertheless, what kinds of games published by Sony from earlier generations do you like that you think has been abandoned in more recent years? It's not an uncommon opinion you're presenting, but I'm curious since I don't often see people actually elaborate on their view.

And that's a good thing. Overtly sexy women are a welcome change after 10+ years of deliberately ugly designs being pumped out by the western games industry to avoid offending psychologically fragile women. [...] Yet the female gaze is fine, according to the industry. I'm really sick of being told that women can have attractive one-dimensional male characters, but men are evil for wanting attractive one-dimensional female characters.

It seems that you have a misunderstanding of what the male gaze is based on your thoughts regarding what you believe the female gaze is. Neither of the two are defined by the characteristics of what's being viewed but instead by the act of viewing itself. Whereas the male gaze perpetuates the notion that women exist to be seen by, enjoyed by, and to please men, these are not qualities evident of the female gaze. In fact, the female gaze has nothing to do with men at all but is centered around women reclaiming lost personhood and empowering themselves from the default counterpart.

With that said, I think that there are an insignificant number of people who take issue that attractive characters of any gender exist in games; instead, what is bothering is when a character's physical appearance is designed to be engaged with disparagingly in the aforementioned ways while that same character is simultaneously robbed of any agency over it. Conveniently, sworddude has mentioned the character 2B from Nier: Automata who can be an example of a woman character who not only safeguards her agency but actively rejects the male gaze. This is evident when the player attempts to look up her skirt and she forcibly redirects the camera's positioning.

Of course, the condition of women characters being gazed upon by the player audience of video games is but an extension to the real world experiences by real women but, for the sake of this conversation, is being emphasized in the context of games considering the nature of the forum and discussion.

Some IPs I loved that Sony abandoned were SOCOM, Resistance, and the Japan Studio works like Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian. Do I want them to bring those back? Hell no. I don't want modern Sony touching those classics with a 10-foot pole. We need to let old franchises die for their own good.

I agree, albeit my stance is more grounded from the perspective that new creativity should be fostered instead of indefinitely relying upon previous successes. And if you weren't aware, director of the three games you've mentioned Ueda is working on their own project after having left Sony. I suppose the game could still be published by Sony, though.

[dhaabi]

While we may never know just how successful or not Sony's PC ports may actually be in the context of internal financial expectations, I imagine that Sony's decision to abandon the PC market will, for the time being at least, be worthwhile. From my understanding, their PC ports don't release on the same day as the console counterparts, and it can be many years until they enter a this market space. But this decision to revert business plans shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, really, as Sony's priority is to their own hardware market. Were it otherwise, there would be no need for consumers to buy PlayStation hardware.

[weirdfeline]

And if you weren't aware, director of the three games you've mentioned Ueda is working on their own project after having left Sony. I suppose the game could still be published by Sony, though.

His next game is funded and published by Epic Games like Alan Wake II was and Playdead's next game.