In the past few years, former PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 exclusives like God of War, The Last of Us, Marvel's Spider-Man, and Ghost of Tsushima made their way to PC. But with a recent pivot which was finally officially confirmed by SIE's current president Hideaki Nishino last week, it will only be multiplayer and live-service games that will get ported from now on. The man behind the previous strategy, Shawn Layden, recently commented on the reasons behind the company's original PC strategy, and how backtracking from it is a mistake, as it never truly hurt the brand nor sales.
"How do I get my intellectual property in front of people who wouldn't normally see it? Because 250 million or 260 million households in the world have consoles. There's 8 billion people on the planet. There's another 2, 3, 4 billion people playing games on PC or mobile or whatever. How do I get to them," said Layden in a fresh interview with PSI.
Eventually, PlayStation reached these players with its late ports, making more people aware of its characters and stories ahead of the company's expansion into other media. "As we take our intellectual property across other media... you need to have as many eyeballs that are aware of this character [and] of this story, so that when they go to buy a movie ticket, or turn on the TV, or buy a graphic novel, they go 'Oh, I know that guy! I like that guy! I want to see what happens to him next." Looking at the strong receptions of The Last of Us TV show, there's little doubt that the strategy worked, to some extent.
While PlayStation enjoyed increased popularity for some of its IPs across media with its PC expansion, it wasn't harmed by it at all, unlike some have suggested in the past."If someone's waiting 18 months for a game to come on PC, we didn't lose a sale to them—they weren't going to buy the hardware anyway. You're just monetizing someone who was completely out of your ecosystem up until that point. So I don't look at it as devaluing the brand, I look at it as expanding the brand's reach," Layden said.
The former PlayStation boss also believes that backtracking from the previous PC strategy is a mistake, as staggered releases across console and PC protected the core business while producing money from a completely different audience that would have never bought a console just to play a certain game, which is something we also heard earlier this year from Shuhei Yoshida.
Although Shawn Layden has been in favor of staggered PC ports, he also believes that exclusive games are an important element to a "platform business". "That's how you differentiate the platform... If you want that experience, you have to buy this box. And that's what drove hardware sales, which drove ecosystem numbers, which drove third-party royalties, which drove the whole machine," he said. With a day-and-date release on PlayStation and PC, the unique identity of a system would be stripped away, leading to significant issues. "If you make everything available everywhere, then you become a commodity. And when you become a commodity, you're just competing on price, and that's a race to the bottom."
The statement above immediately brings the "Everything is an Xbox" strategy which had a profound impact on the brand. With all console exclusives also coming to PC on day one, there has been no reason to purchase an Xbox system in a very long time, and the current pivot to exclusives starting with Gears of War: E-Day may be too late to reverse course.
PlayStation, on the other hand, is clearly aware of the risks involved in such a strategy, and is making sure that to play games like the upcoming Marvel's Wolverine and God of War: Laufey, gamers have no other choice than purchasing a console, which remains a core part of the company's business, even amidst crippling price increases putting the classic console model into question.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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