Sony today announced the next generation of its PlayStation VR headset, as part of which president and chief executive officer of Sony Interactive Entertainment Jim Ryan did the interview circuit. Talking to GQ the question of releasing PlayStation games on PC came up, and Ryan had only positive things to say. Sony, of course, traditionally did not publish PlayStation games on other platforms.
“A few things changed,” says Ryan. “We find ourselves now in early 2021 with our development studios and the games that they make in better shape than they’ve ever been before. Particularly from the latter half of the PS4 cycle our studios made some wonderful, great games. There’s an opportunity to expose those great games to a wider audience and recognise the economics of game development, which are not always straightforward. The cost of making games goes up with each cycle, as the calibre of the IP has improved. Also, our ease of making it available to non-console owners has grown. So it’s a fairly straightforward decision for us to make.”
TL; DR: making games is more expensive than ever. Sony likes making money from its games, and getting them on PC is easy. “A whole slate” of first-party titles is apparently on the way, and the first game announced is open-world bike-’em-up Days Gone, coming “this spring.”
Ryan goes on to specifically discuss the reception to Horizon Zero Dawn’s release last year.
“We assessed the exercise in two ways. Firstly, in terms of the straightforward success of the activity of publishing the game on PC, people liked it and they bought it. We also looked at it through the lens of what the PlayStation community thought about it. There was no massive adverse reaction to it. So we will continue to take mission steps in this direction.”
Jim Ryan’s lucky I wasn’t in the room, because after this I’d be shirtless screaming “Bloodborne when?!?” in his face, while a panicked PR tries to call security and placate me with an email statement. Jokes aside (it is not a joke) Sony’s firstparty studios have produced dozens of exceptional exclusives for the various PlayStation platforms, and the prospect of something like the Uncharted series, or the God of War reboot, or Insomniac’s brilliant Spider-Man games on PC… yeah, I’ll have that.
Bloodborne first though. By the gods, bring Bloodborne to PC, please.