Report: Sony to stop releasing first-party singleplayer PlayStation games on PC

Sony will stop releasing its new first-party singleplayer games on PC, sources tell Bloomberg's Jason Schreier.

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With Microsoft's rumored Xbox PC on the horizon, Sony is moving back towards exclusives. New reports indicate that Sony has changed its mind on releasing key first-party singleplayer games on Steam. Some current and all future singleplayer games will remain exclusive to PlayStation, including the already-released Ghost of Yotei and Housemarque's upcoming gaming Saros. Live service games will remain cross-platform.

Interestingly enough, this may not be a permanent shift away from PC. Sources say that Sony's plans are in flux and change often. While Sony has had success selling its games on PC, generating over $2.3 billion in sales from games sold on non-PlayStation platforms (including Xbox) since 2019, but this growth may not be fast or substantial enough to offset the potential impact risks to the PlayStation brand.

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Sony includes its PC sales as part of PlayStation's Other Software, which includes all of the money made from games not sold on PlayStation (think Helldivers 2 on Xbox as well as all of Sony's Steam releases). While $2.3 billion is no paltry sum, the reality is that Other Software is only a very small contributor to Sony's mighty Game & Network Services revenues.

Based on our findings, Other Software makes anywhere from 2-5% of quarterly earnings from 2022 to present day.

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Ultimately, Sony has treated PC as a secondary platform for its games in a bid to differentiate sales, expand its presence on other platforms, and test the waters for new cross-platform business models.

Yet, selling games on platforms that Sony doesn't own can impact the PlayStation business; Sony doesn't own or operate Steam, and that store is the prime source for game sales on Microsoft's wholly-owned Windows operating system. By this virtue, Sony is inadvertently fueling its rival with game content that would otherwise not have been made available.

In its yearly business meetings, Sony makes it a point to discuss the lifetime value (LTV) of PlayStation 5 gamers. This is basically the total sum value that a gamer will spend on content throughout the timeframe that they own a PS5.

Selling games off-platform means consumers no longer have to buy games (or the hardware required to play them) directly from Sony, which impacts both the hardware- and software-based LTVs.

In short, Sony could be paring back its PC releases so that consumers have no choice but to buy the software directly from them--and to buy the PlayStation 5 hardware required to play the games.

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Last year's business meeting also reinforced PlayStation's 5th Mid-Range Plan, and the theme of that plan is "Console & Beyond." These plans offer 3-year snapshots of what Sony's various divisions will do throughout that timeframe.

PlayStation's 5th Mid-Range Plan started in FY23, and will end in FY26, which is the current fiscal year of Sony's operations.