The word is that Sony is rolling back its strategy of releasing big, exclusive, single-player PlayStation games \u2014 the likes of Marvel\u2019s Spider-Man<\/em>, The Last of Us<\/em>, and God of War<\/em> \u2014 on Windows PC. Without putting formal reporting out there, several well-connected journalists have suggested that the strategy\u2019s days are numbered.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n On the Triple Click podcast, Bloomberg\u2019s Jason Schreier said, \u201cThe sense I’m getting is that they’re backing away from putting their exclusive console stuff, like traditional single-player stuff, on PC. […] I think that\u2019s going to stop.\u201d Schreier cited this year\u2019s Marvel\u2019s Wolverine<\/em> as one example of an in-house Sony game that may never get a PC version. Schreier confirmed on the ResetEra forum that his comments were \u201cnot speculation.\u201d<\/p>\n John Linneman, of the respected gaming tech channel Digital Foundry, concurs. \u201cI have an inkling that they\u2019re pulling away from PC. Watch this space,\u201d Linneman said recently. \u201cI get the feeling that under the current leadership PC has become less important. […] I think console is where they want to be.\u201d<\/p>\n No smoke without fire? Well, there\u2019s certainly plenty of smoke. Enough to reach Jez Corden of Windows Central, who normally focuses on Microsoft and Xbox in his reporting. Months ago, Corden said he\u2019d heard \u201cfrom a very good source that PlayStation probably is pulling back from PC.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, noted leaker Nate the Hate posted on X that Sony was \u201cshifting\u201d its PC release strategy away from single-player game releases. \u201cThe decision to shift away from supporting PC was made last year,\u201d Nate said.<\/p>\n All were at pains to point out that this strategic shift doesn\u2019t apply to Sony\u2019s live service games, which will continue to pursue multiplatform releases. Helldivers 2<\/em> has been an enormous hit on Steam, and eventually even reached Xbox consoles, while Bungie\u2019s Marathon<\/em> arrives on PC and Xbox as well as PS5 this week.<\/p>\n All the same, if Sony is moving away from releasing its marquee console exclusives on PC, it represents a surprising turn away from the gravitational pull of Steam, which almost the entire gaming industry seems to find irresistible. Microsoft was publishing Xbox games on PC (including Steam) long before its recent transformation into a full-scale multiplatform publisher. Is Sony swimming against the tide? And if so, why?<\/p>\n It turns out that there\u2019s a simple reason for Sony to change its mind: After a strong start, its PC games aren\u2019t really selling.<\/p>\n This was alluded to by Schreier, who said \u201cI’m not sure how super successful those PC releases were,\u201d and Corden, who said PlayStation\u2019s PC releases \u201cdidn’t move the needle for them at all.\u201d And it\u2019s backed up by the numbers. A report by industry analysts Alinea Analytics from November 2025 begins by estimating that Sony\u2019s Steam releases have generated no less than $1.5 billion in revenue. But it\u2019s clear that Helldivers 2<\/em> is the outlier, with its 12.7 million sales dwarfing the rest of the Sony catalog.<\/p>\n More pertinently, after a strong start, sales of Sony\u2019s core console franchises on Steam are declining. Alinea shows that Steam sales of sequels Horizon Forbidden West<\/em>, God of War Ragnar\u00f6k<\/em>, and Marvel\u2019s Spider-Man 2 <\/em>all lag far behind those of their predecessors, something the analytics firm attributes to the novelty value of PlayStation games on PC wearing off.<\/p>\n The same trend can be seen in peak concurrent player counts on Steam. Spider-Man<\/em> hit a peak of 66,436 players in August 2022; Spider-Man 2<\/em> managed just 28,189 two and a half years later. God of War Ragnar\u00f6k<\/em>\u2019s <\/em>peak was less than half of God of War<\/em>\u2019s 73,529.<\/p>\n Frankly, it\u2019s not like these games were all that popular on Steam to begin with. Compare these peak numbers \u2014 or The Last of Us<\/em>\u2019 36,496, or Ghost of Tsushima<\/em>\u2019s 77,154 \u2014 with a similar, AAA, single-player action-adventure from a third-party publisher but with strong links to the PlayStation brand. Resident Evil Requiem <\/em>peaked at 344,214 players on Steam this past weekend. By comparison, Sony\u2019s Steam releases started as pretty modest hits, and now they\u2019re barely even that.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a simple reason for these underwhelming numbers. Sony waits at least a year before releasing PC ports of its PS5 exclusives. Once the novelty value of being Nathan Drake on a PC wears off, there\u2019s no way this strategy can compete with the hype of a major day-and-date release like Requiem<\/em>\u2019s. The low Steam sales indicate players who want to play these games are finding them on PlayStation first \u2014 which is, of course, exactly what Sony wants them to do.<\/p>\n There is one interesting exception. Stellar Blade<\/em>, the Sony-published action game from Korean developer Shift Up, peaked at an impressive 192,078 players on its Steam release last year. Stellar Blade<\/em>, which features controversially revealing costumes for its hero character Eve, doesn\u2019t really follow the traditional in-house Sony aesthetic. For all the monolithic size of the Steam audience, maybe players there do have a taste of their own that\u2019s quite distinct from that of the PlayStation mainstream.<\/p>\n Sony could probably improve its PC gaming sales by moving to a day-and-date release model like Xbox\u2019s, but PlayStation executives have repeatedly said they\u2019re unwilling to do this. This is a line in the sand for the company; it will do anything to avoid devaluing its hardware as Microsoft has done.<\/p>\n That being the case, if Sony\u2019s current strategy of delayed PC ports isn\u2019t that effective, it\u2019s logical for the company to choose to bolster PlayStation\u2019s value further by withdrawing from putting its single-player games on PC altogether. It makes sense \u2014 even if it\u2019s disappointing for PC gamers.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"Two](\"https:\/\/static0.polygonimages.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/ghost-of-tsushima.jpg?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2\")
\n <\/picture>Image: Sucker Punch Productions\/Sony Interactive Entertainment<\/small><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"Spider-Man,](\"https:\/\/static0.polygonimages.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/spider-man.jpg?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2\")
\n <\/picture>Image: Insomniac Games\/Sony Interactive Entertainment<\/small><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"Eve](\"https:\/\/static0.polygonimages.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/stellar-blade.jpg?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2\")
\n <\/picture>Image: Shift Up\/Sony Interactive Entertainment<\/small><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n