Sony’s decision to mandate PSN account linking with its PC ports has caused friction with the fanbase outside of its PlayStation ecosystem, but it’s not backing down.
Speaking as part of a financial call with investors, boss Hiroki Totoki said the organisation had “learned a lot” from the situation but needs to keep players safe. It’s a comment that’s obviously going to invite immediate criticism.
“The PlayStation accounts that we have offered – well actually, by offering them, for instance, sometimes that tends to invite pushback,” he said, via an interpreter. “But for the live service games, in order to maintain order of the gaming so that anybody can enjoy the games safely, we need to create an environment conducive to that and, of course, enjoying the game freely.”
To be fair, Totoki was speaking about failed first-person shooter Concord during this part of the call, so was focusing purely on live service games.
But that doesn’t change the fact that titles like Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered and God of War Ragnarok don’t have any kind of online interaction, so it’s clear Totoki is not being entirely transparent about Sony’s objectives here. In reality, it wants to make PC users part of its ecosystem, so it can track their playing habits and bolster its monthly active user statistics.