In the past couple of years, Sony has made frequent efforts to port some of its juiciest PlayStation exclusives to PC. So far, the Japanese company has migrated God of War, The Last of Us, Horizon, Spider-Man, and even Ghost of Tsushima. One of the main reasons for this, as was revealed by a former Sony head, is that PC ports are relatively effortless to make while still generating huge returns for Sony.
The statement came from Shuhei Yoshida himself, who was replaced by Herman Hulst back in 2019. Yoshida has also recently sat down for an interview with Sacred Symbols+ on a paywalled Patreon site. In the interview, Yoshida discussed that he actually pushed for PC ports and releases back when he was the president of Sony Interactive Entertainment.
Sony at the time, however, didn’t believe in such an initiative and only began regularly porting PlayStation exclusives to PC in 2020 after realizing how easy they were to make compared to the profit they generated. Horizon Zero Dawn was the first among these exclusives and had a successful PC launch with now more than two million copies sold on the PC.
“Porting to PC is way cheaper than creating an original title. So, it’s almost like printing money,” recalls Yoshida, courtesy of Tech4Gamers.
Yoshida further explained that PC ports are “easy money” for Sony when fans wondered why Sony kept porting games to PC when they already had a near-monopolistic grasp on non-handheld consoles. In turn, this income helped Sony with sequels and the company even believed that it helped PC owners warm up to the idea of owning PlayStations in order to experience exclusives on their launch date.
Even if Sony is now consistently porting exclusives to PC, some of them still take several years to bring to market despite how easy they are to produce, based on Yoshida’s words.
It Appears Some Exclusives are Off-Limits
Sony’s idea to bring some of its best exclusives is no doubt good news for PC players (and Sony’s treasury), but one notable Souls game seems to evade this initiative. Bloodborne, a game that’s well-due for a remaster (and an expected PC port to go along with it), is still nowhere to be found on the PC despite the frequent (or rather desperate) requests.
What’s even more confounding about the situation is how Days Gone got a remaster first compared to Bloodborne when the former was only released six years ago. Meanwhile, Bloodborne is covered in cobwebs all the way from 2015 so it’s now a solid decade ever since the PlayStation exclusive was released.
The Souls game is still nowhere in sight, whether as a remaster or a PC port and even some efforts to bring Bloodborne to PC are being squashed. However, that could also mean Sony is preparing a Bloodborne remaster and PC port in the future and doesn’t want unofficial mods to undercut its money-printing. I wish that wasn’t just wishful thinking, though.
