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Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden has spoken out, disagreeing with Sony's reported decision to pull back on PC port frequency. He argues that bringing games to PC expands the audience without hurting console sales.
Transcript
00:00Sony has reportedly decided to pull back on PC port frequency, at least for big single-player
00:05games, but a former higher-up from the corporation doesn't quite see the logic. On the PSI podcast
00:11via VGC, Sean Layden, former chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios,
00:17explains, first of all, the games don't go on PC for like a year, or whatever it is. He adds,
00:23if they think that a game coming out 18 months after its launch on another platform somehow
00:27stopped a sale from happening 18 months ago in the hardware business, I would like to see how they
00:31can prove that thesis. A year and a half is actually on the lower side. Some of the ports we've
00:36seen on
00:36PC, such as Marvel's Spider-Man, Ghost of Tsushima, and God of War, took years to move away from PS4
00:42and PS5 and onto the likes of Steam. As Layden points out, if someone's waiting 18 months for
00:47something to come on PC, we didn't lose a sale to them. They weren't going to buy the hardware anyway.
00:52He believes the development cost for these ports was likely the largest contributing factor to
00:56Sony's reported pivot, but to him, saving that money misses the point. The PC thing, in my mind
01:02anyway at the time, was not to make money. Frankly, it was how do I get my intellectual property in
01:07front of people who wouldn't normally see it, he explains. It's a fair argument, and now the
01:12Steam Machine exists, you have to wonder whether Sony's cutting off its nose to spite its face here.
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