Sony PlayStation reportedly moving away from PC ports

News in today is that Sony PlayStation will reportedly be moving away from single-player games having PC ports as they try to keep people buying consoles.

The report comes from Jason Schreier at Bloomberg (Paywall) noting that it will mark a return to full exclusives, but we'll still see various online games be multi-platform. PlayStation have so far refused to comment on it directly.

Pictured - Ghost of Yotei

Schreier mentions that things could still change (as they do in the games industry) but plans for the likes of Ghost of Yotei and other internally developed games to come to PC have been cancelled. We do at least already have Death Stranding 2 confirmed and releasing soon though.

There's a few likely reasons but the biggest being that Sony no doubt want people to keep buying their consoles, so they then directly get their cut from sales in their own store. It's all about that control, their protection of their own brand without watering it down with PC releases.

When you add into it that there were reports that the next-gen Xbox would be more like Windows, with other stores being available (like Steam) - it's highly likely that Sony didn't want to have all their games end up on that as well further watering down their own brand. And, with the rise of SteamOS and the upcoming Steam Machine having access to it all too - I can imagine that at least entered the minds of those at the top as well for more future potential competition.

A shame really. I've very much enjoyed not being forced to have a particular console just to play some specific games.

If this is all true it means we're going back to the era of console wars it seems - in some way at least.