Former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida discusses Sony's apparent pullback from PC ports

Former PlayStation worldwide studios president Shuhei Yoshida recently discussed Sony's reported shift away from bringing its major narrative single-player titles to PC. Speaking on an episode of The Verge's Vergecast, Yoshida addressed reports indicating that PlayStation studio business group CEO Hermen Hulst told staff that games such as Ghost of Yotei and Saros would remain PlayStation console exclusives moving forward.

Yoshida noted that during the PS4 generation, Sony prioritized keeping first-party AAA games exclusive to appeal directly to console gamers. During the PS5 era, the strategy shifted toward a hybrid approach. Online titles like Helldivers 2 launched on PC simultaneously with the console version, while major single-player games arrived on PC later, including Horizon Forbidden West and Marvel's Spider-Man 2. This allowed Sony to reward PlayStation users with timed exclusivity while also reaching new PC players who might eventually purchase a console.

Although Yoshida is no longer with the company and acknowledged he does not know internal decisions for certain, he suggested that the internal debate between first-party game sales and the hardware platform business has shifted. He stated that the platform business side is winning the argument, noting that the platform side always wants exclusives. Previously, Yoshida described porting games to PC as being almost like printing money, making the potential pivot back to exclusive hardware incentives a notable shift for the company.