Former PS Boss Shawn Layden Speaks Against Sony No Longer Releasing Single-Player Games on PC - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 July 2026 / 1,825 Views
Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden in an interview with PSI Podcast stated he doesn't understand why Sony has decided to stop releasing first-party single-player games on PC as they were all late ports.
"First of all, the games don't go on PC for like a year or whatever it is. It's not day and date," said Layden (via VideoGamesChronicle).
"And if they think that a game coming out 18 months after its launch on another platform somehow stopped a sale from happening 18 months ago in the hardware business, I would like to see how they can prove that thesis.
"You can feel that is true [but] I don't happen to feel that's true. 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."
It was under Layden that PlayStation started to port some of its games over to PC. He defended this decision.
“There's been a lot of misunderstanding about my decision to put games on PC," he said. "I think exclusivity is very important to a platform business. That's how you differentiate. If you want Zelda, you go to Nintendo. If you need Mario, that's where you go, that's where you find it.
"And at the PlayStation business, we did exclusivity throughout PS1, PS2, PS3, that was just the standard of the day. We had Japanese companies who would be exclusive to the PlayStation platform, through our relationships with them. And so that became the standard way you sold the platform."
He added, "Moving into PC or multi-platform releases is really about two things. The PC thing, in my mind anyway at the time, was not to make money, frankly, 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 crazy. I didn't think that was going to happen.
"But as we take our intellectual property across other media, whether it's into films or it's in television or in comic books or into merchandise you need to have as many eyeballs that are aware of this character, of this story."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
More Articles
I agree. At the price points consoles are at, and are still heading, if PC players were gonna buy a PS5, they would’ve bought one by now.
I'm one of those PC gamers. I've bought just about all of the single-player PS games on PC. At this point just waiting on a good discount for Spider-Man 2. Money has become a bit tight and I can't justify spending $600+ on a console. I've even been on the fence for a Switch 2 at $450.
His correct, Someone willing to wait was never a future customer.
He's probably not entirely correct... but for the most part he probably is. Some of those people willing to wait were probably going to buy the console otherwise, but it's probably not a lot of them. They also wouldn't have bought the game at a high price, so it might actually be more profitable to sell the games on PC instead when the price is still higher.
Of course there's also the question of what multiplatform releases do to the image of your platform and especially future hardware releases. I'm still going to guess releasing games on PC as well would be more profitable than not, but this is also probably a much trickier question to get right.
I've migrated all my gaming to PC since consoles are pointless asf when I can play all the same xb/PS games on PC without getting charged monthly subscription just to play online on top of that. So yes tell Sony they should stop production of their PS hardware like they are doing with physical disc and release all their games on PC since they're going all digital anyway.
