In an age where dollars seem to be the driving force behind large companies, Sony just, I dunno, is Sony I guess.

Is the PS5 a cool machine? Yessiree. Is it a gated community? Yup. Does it charge you for things you get for free on PC? Yes (though so does XBOX and Nintendo). It it more expensive than a Steam Deck? Yes. Is it worth buying? 85 million people think so.

For about a decent chunk of time, back in the PS4 days, if you waited a year or two, you’d see a first party game also launch on PC. Now, in almost every single case that port would be a bug ridden heap that needed months of patching, but it was there. (I will say that these crappy ports absolutely cost Sony money and bad press.) I know I picked up more than a few. With the PS5 currently near $900 (which, you know, holy cow), and the shakeup at XBOX, it seems that PlayStation is taking a hard turn on that model.

Sony Pulls Back From PlayStation Games on PC – Bloomberg

This only applies to single player ‘exclusives’, so Ghost of Yotei, Saros, and the upcoming Wolverine are unlikely to see the light of day on PC. As a consumer, this sucks as there’s less choice. I’ve purposefully avoided Nintendo games for a long time due to the frankly ridonculous price points, but it hasn’t been all that painful as I’ve functionally only missed … one Zelda and one Donkey Kong game. XBOX has lived on PC for some time now, and I can’t see them throwing the baby with the bathwater here…

PlayStation going ‘all in’ on hardware gating is a very weird thing to do, and at this point seems somewhat sunk given the PS5 footprint. We know the PS6 is around the corner, but with all the crap going around right now causing IT equipment shortages… this thing looks like it will come with a $1k+ price tag and only the scalpers making any sense of it.

Obviously in order to sell hardware, you need a damn strong selling point with software. (Hello XBOX!) Diluting that with PC sales, sales of which are on devices that cost less than the price of a console, is a tough pitch to make. Sony for sure has spent a few billion dollars investing here on the next big thing, and the last thing it needs is a relief valve on expectations. As a short/medium term decision to focus all it’s energy into the PS6, this makes business sense. As a consumer, I know where my habits stand, and there’s no real chance I’m getting a console that offers much, much less than what I already have. It’s a walled garden, and a pretty one at that. But my backlog of games actively prevents me from any FOMO. And dollars to donuts, it’s more than likely that Sony will revert in a few years anyways. Until then, I have a list to get through…