Sony plans to drag PC gamers to PlayStation with ‘strategic’ narrative releases

Sony has grand plans to wield its popular narrative-driven single-player games as a weapon to bring a new audience from PC across to PlayStation, with the company banking on those interested gamers buying consoles to play sequels.

The flagship strategy comes straight from Hermen Hulst, the soon-to-be co-chief executive officer of Sony’s PlayStation gaming business, who addressed the burning question of day one PC releases during the company’s Game & Network Services Business Segment meeting slides and presentations on May 29.

While live service will keep seeing simultaneous launches across platforms, Sony emphasized taking “a more strategic approach” with its narrative-driven titles. “On the live service side, we are releasing our titles simultaneously, so day and date, on PlayStation 5 and PC,” Hulst said. “But with our tentpole titles—our singleplayer narrative-driven titles—that are, as you saw on the presentation, the backbone of what PlayStation Studios has delivered in recent years and in our history, we take a more strategic approach.”

So far this year, Sony has already released Horizon Forbidden West and Ghost of Tsushima—two hit titles belonging to the company’s coveted narrative category—on PC. This followed live-service Helldivers 2‘s simultaneous launch on PlayStation 5 and PC.

“We are finding new audiences that are potentially going to be very interested in playing, for example, sequels on the PlayStation platform,” Hulst explained. “We have high hopes that we are actually able to bring new players into PlayStation at large, but into PlayStation platforms specifically.”

Hulst compared this conversion strategy to Sony’s approach with other media—like The Last of Us TV series, or Gran Turismo the film—which, according to the soon-to-be joint CEO, has brought new audiences to the company’s franchises.