His full story is forthcoming, but I don’t know how that squares with incoming PC ports for Death Stranding 2 and the sequel to Kena. Maybe because they’re only Sony published? Exclusivity of a handful of games that I may or may not be interested in still isn’t going to make me want a PS5, personally.
This makes a lot of sense if the next Xbox is just a glorified PC. Right now Sony releases some of their games to PC, but never to Xbox. Multiplayer titles really are the ones that make no sense being exclusive because you need that extended network effect
I don’t think keeping the single player games exclusive makes much sense either. Sony’s bread is buttered by taking the same 30% Valve makes on each game sale. If they’re only converting you for single player games, you’re buying…what…5 games on the platform, lifetime? And they’re all Sony published? Realistically, on PC, you’re probably already playing everything else on PC with no subscription fee that they would want to get a cut from. I think Sony has reached everyone they’re going to reach, and you’re just leaving money on the table by not bringing those games to PC, even if they come late.
The exclusive games lead to more sales of other games. If they get rid of exclusives they might as well just give it up and end the PlayStation brand.
PC may be fine for you, but it’s still a shit show IMO. Maybe Valve will fix it. Gaming on Linux has gotten way better since the SteamDeck came out, but still not good enough to get me to switch. Maybe the Steam Machine will eventually turn the tides. But hell, they take 30% too, so really no different than Sony from a developer’s perspective
I don’t think the Xbox or PlayStation brand will end anytime soon, but trying to keep doing things the way they’ve been done makes about as much sense as a cable company fighting against the rise of streaming television. PC is the largest single platform and is still growing, and even despite the complete obliteration of Sony’s closest competitor, PlayStation 5 hasn’t grown compared to 4; their growth has only come from selling at higher prices to the same number of users and from microtransactions from games that they don’t make themselves which are available on many platforms. Which doesn’t mean that they don’t still have their customers like yourself, but if I already decided to play my games on PC, how on earth are they going to convince me to start buying third party games on PlayStation, where their money is actually made? At the very least, they can offer me the ability to buy their big blockbusters (which often cost more to make than they’re seeing back in returns these days) on PC to recoup some of what they spent.