After an experiment that lasted six years, PlayStation has decided to stop publishing its narrative games on PC. This is a strategic withdrawal that affects only its ‘singleplayer’ titles and aims to keep the value of Sony consoles intact. The decision, however, is not without controversy. Not only are there many Steam users angry with the company after the decision, but also Shawn Layden thinks it’s a mistake. And those are big words, since we are talking about someone who worked at the company from 1987 to 2019 and who came to lead SIE Worldwide Studios, being one of the great promoters of this ‘ports’ policy.

PlayStation needs to increase its reach

Shawn Layden, who was the main driver of Sony’s jump to the PC, explained in an interview with PSI that the main objective was not to make money. “The thing was… How do I put my sagas in front of people who are not normally accessible to them? How do I get the world of Horizon to be seen by people who are not part of the PlayStation world? I didn’t think they were going to buy a PlayStation, I’m not that crazy. When you take franchises to other media such as movies or television, you need as many eyes as possible. Focusing only on PlayStation users, telling only them the story and then trying to make the jump to another medium… that’s a huge leap. “

For Layden the main idea was simply that the general public knew about Sony franchises and that the business generated enough income to sustain itself. In his opinion, furthermore, the risk of losing console sales was very low. “If someone has waited 18 months for a game to come out on PC, it’s not a console sold less; it’s someone who wasn’t going to buy the console in the first place. You’re monetizing something that until then was outside the ecosystem. I don’t think you’re devaluing the brand, I think you’re increasing the reach it has,” he explained. The former director of SIE Worldwide Studios also added that the idea that releasing games on PC would lead to fewer consoles being sold was “a very difficult one to prove.”

Everyone can have their opinions on Shawn Layden’s arguments, but there is something that the former PlayStation leader is not wrong about: the large video game development and console sales companies. they need to increase their reach. Consoles are restricted to a very specific geographical space (the United States, Western Europe and Japan) but video games have become a global product. In this sense, it is necessary that new users who join, for example, from developing economies, can get to know Kratos or Aloy. And something that has become clear lately is that hardware presents an almost insurmountable barrier to entry.

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