Ex-PlayStation CEO Says Sony’s PC Push Was About Reach, Not Profit
Shawn Layden, the longtime former President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment of America, has weighed in on why PlayStation’s move onto PC always had more to do with reach than immediate profit.
In an interview with the YouTube channel PSI, Layden was asked about the real value of exclusives. His take was that it’s still smart to build games that are only available on PlayStation, while also planning to expand those experiences to new audiences later. He stressed that the push to PC wasn’t designed as a short-term money grab; instead, it was meant to grow PlayStation’s intellectual property beyond the players already living inside the PlayStation ecosystem.
Layden said that need became even more important once PlayStation started preparing to turn its established IP into films and television. If those stories are going to work across formats, he argued, the characters need to be recognizable to a broader public—not just people who already follow PlayStation releases.
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“The PC thing, in my mind at the time, was not to make money, frankly,” Layden said. “It was, ‘How do I get my intellectual property in front of people who wouldn’t normally see it? How do I get the world of Horizon to be seen by people who aren’t in the PlayStation world?’ Not necessarily because they’re going to buy a PlayStation—I wasn’t that naive. But as we take our [IP] across other media, whether it’s film, television, comic books, or whatever, you need as many eyes as possible to be aware of this character and this story.”
He added that relying only on the existing PlayStation audience, and then expecting audiences to seamlessly follow the franchise into other entertainment channels, creates a much bigger hurdle than it sounds. “Just concentrating on the PlayStation population and only telling them these stories, and then trying to bring it off that platform into other media, that’s going to be a hell of a jump,” Layden said.
Layden also argued that the typical PC buyer likely wasn’t a lost console customer anyway. With a long gap between the original console release and the eventual PC version, he suggested that players who were truly waiting for a specific game would have already picked up the PlayStation version rather than hold out for PC.
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“If someone’s waiting 18 months for something to come on PC, we didn’t lose a sale to them. They weren’t going to buy the hardware anyway,” Layden said.
The comments arrive amid reports that PlayStation is stepping back from PC for its narrative-driven single-player games. Under that plan, future releases such as Marvel’s Wolverine, Intergalactic, and God of War Laufey would not be coming to PC. Instead, the platform would be reserved largely for live-service titles, with no more broad, game-by-game rollout approach.
Those reports also claim PlayStation viewed its PC ports as uneven and not generating enough revenue to justify the effort. While the releases weren’t dominating sales charts, Layden’s point remains that they still reached players who might never have tried these games otherwise. Still, in a climate where publishers are trimming expenses wherever possible, it appears PlayStation may have decided that continuing PC support wasn’t an area it could afford.
Cade Onder is a freelancer for IGN’s news team. He covers all things entertainment, including gaming, film, and more. You can find him on Twitter @Cade_Onder.
