{"id":735234,"date":"2026-06-30T17:32:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T17:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/735234\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T17:32:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T17:32:12","slug":"i-dont-know-what-theyre-thinking-ex-playstation-boss-weighs-in-on-sonys-pc-port-backtracking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/735234\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I Don’t Know What They’re Thinking’: Ex-PlayStation Boss Weighs in on Sony’s PC Port Backtracking"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PS5<\/a><\/p>\n

Ex-PlayStation boss Shawn Layden often pops up with some interesting insight and opinions these days, now that he’s long removed from Sony’s gaming business.<\/p>\n

This is a guy who knows more about the industry than most of us ever will, and so his takes are always worth listening to \u2014 especially when they’re on hot topics like Sony’s recent decision to step away from porting its single player titles to PC.<\/p>\n

In an interview with PSI<\/a>, Layden admits that he doesn’t quite understand PlayStation’s adjusted approach.<\/p>\n

He argues that, at least during his time at the company, porting previously exclusive games to PC was never really about profit \u2014 it was about expanding the reach of key properties.<\/p>\n

Layden begins: “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?’.”<\/p>\n

“Not necessarily because they’re gonna buy a PlayStation \u2014 I wasn’t that crazy, I didn’t think that was gonna happen \u2014 but as we take our intellectual property across other media, whether it’s into films and television, or comic books, or into merchandise, whatever, you need to have as many eyeballs that are aware of this character, of this story.”<\/p>\n

He continues: “And just concentrating on the PlayStation population, and only telling them these stories, and then trying to bring it off of that platform and into different media \u2014 that’s gonna be a hell of a jump.”<\/p>\n

The idea of porting known properties to other platforms “was really just to get mindshare”, Layden summarises.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Of course, this perspective contrasts reports that financial profit was an all-important reason for Sony’s shift away from PC.<\/p>\n

At the start of June, Bloomberg’s ever-reliable Jason Schreier laid it out<\/a>, saying: “[the single-player PC ports] didn’t make enough money, and they want to keep their IP aligned to their own platform.”<\/p>\n

But again, as stressed by Layden, making money was never the main goal.<\/p>\n

He does add context, however, pointing towards the relative success that Sony has found in porting its multiplayer titles to other platforms.<\/p>\n

“If you have a massively multiplayer online game or a live service game \u2014 certainly a free-to-play game \u2014 then you have to be multiplatform. Because the economics don’t work.”<\/p>\n

He breaks it down: “It’s all about, as we say in the business, the size of the funnel. Because you put all of these people through the funnel in a free-to-play game, and if you get… 3% of those people that actually spend money on a thing, that’s your conversation rate, then you go ‘yay, we made money’.”<\/p>\n

“But it has to be 3% of 50 million. Not 3% of 5 million. So that’s what happens with those kinds of games, that’s why they go multiplatform.”<\/p>\n

PSI then query Layden on perception; does the process of porting exclusive properties to PC devalue Sony’s established IPs, and ultimately, the PlayStation brand?<\/p>\n

“First of all, the games don’t go on PC for like, a year,” he replies, alluding to the kind of typical console exclusivity period that Sony had established.<\/p>\n

“And if [Sony] thinks that a game coming out 18 months after its [PS5] launch, on another platform, somehow stopped a sale from happening 18 months ago in the hardware business… I’d like to see how they can prove that thesis.”<\/p>\n

“I don’t happen to feel that’s true,” he reveals. “I think 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.”<\/p>\n

Layden concludes: “If [not porting to PC] is a way to just cover costs, or the burden of making a port \u2014 there’s some money attached to that \u2014 or it’s a distraction or whatever… yeah, I don’t know what they’re thinking.”<\/p>\n

Where do you sit on all of this porting business? Do you think Layden’s got a point, or have things changed since he was in charge? Keep yourself exclusive in the comments section below.<\/p>\n

[source youtube.com<\/a>, via respawnfirst.com<\/a>]<\/p>\n

\"Robert<\/p>\n

Robert (or Rob if you’re lazy) is an assistant editor of Push Square, and has been a fan of PlayStation since the 90s, when Tekken 2 introduced him to the incredible world of video games. He still takes his fighting games seriously, but RPGs are his true passion. The Witcher, Persona, Dragon Quest, Mass Effect, Final Fantasy, Trails, Tales \u2014 he’s played ’em all. A little too much, some might say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ex-PlayStation boss Shawn Layden often pops up with some interesting insight and opinions these days, now that he’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":735235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[2210,1015,1014,74],"class_list":["post-735234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-pc","tag-ps5","tag-sony","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=735234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/735235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=735234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=735234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=735234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}