While Sony hadn’t made any official statements about it returning to console-exclusive releases when it came to its single-player games, the company now seems to be making this fact more explicit. A new advertisement video has been released to promote PS5 games. The 30-second video showcases games new and old, and you can check it out below.
The older games it shows are Ghost of Yōtei, Astro Bot, Saros, and Gran Turismo 7 – four games notable for never coming to PC despite being released during the company’s push to other platforms. Accompanying these are upcoming games like Marvel’s Wolverine and God of War Laufey. This would indicate that there are no plans to bring any of these titles to PC at all, and that going forward the company will only go with multiplatform releases for multiplayer games.
Interestingly, while Sony hasn’t entirely abandoned the idea of multiplatform releases, as could be seen with the continued success of co-op shooter Helldivers 2, the video also shows off one game that has a multiplayer component and still never made it to other platforms – Gran Turismo 7. Recent multiplayer games have still been coming out on more platforms. Marathon, for instance, came to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, on the other hand, only came to PC and PS5. Similarly, Horizon Hunters Gathering is slated for simultaneous release across PC and PS5.
Reports from earlier have indicated that there were some plans to bring Ghost of Yōtei to PC in the past. However, these plans have seemingly been canceled, with people “familiar with the company’s plans” indicating that there was a “faction within PlayStation” that didn’t want to release games on PC.
More recently, it looks like Microsoft also shares some of Sony’s sentiments regarding exclusives, with the company announcing that both Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution will only come to PC and Xbox Series X/S. Microsoft is taking a more gradual approach to exclusive games, however, and upcoming titles like Fable continue to be slated for PS5 as well.
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has spoken about wanting to release more exclusive games on Xbox in the future. However, she noted that the business “isn’t particularly healthy” at the moment, so the strategy of having a couple of exclusive releases is a way for the company to test the waters. More exclusive games will seemingly be released once the business starts getting healthier.
“Look, I think that we are the number two publisher in the world, and when you do that, you want your games to be everywhere,” she said. “You’re stronger when the world plays with you. At the same time, we’re increasingly becoming more of a platform, and it’s hard to find examples of platforms out there that don’t have exclusive services and content.”
“And so, this is a journey for us. Our business isn’t particularly healthy. So, we’re starting by introducing 1-2 signature exclusives. As the business gets healthy, we will look to try and do more.”
