Sony Reportedly Confirms Shift Back to PS5 Single Player Exclusive Games

Personally it doesn't bother me either way. If they're on PC there's more money coming and more chance of sequels. But I can see why they want to keep games only on Playstation too

About the only good thing that come out his mouth since he took Ryan’s job

With prices soaring up, there needs to be a bigger incentive for customers to keep being a part of the PS ecosystem and for the money they have spent to be justified, so while I understand if some of the PC users are going to be against this, it makes total sense why it's happening. Now, only thing they need to do is keep pumping out exclusives from 1st party studios, and maybe contract some outside studios to revive old IP, similar to how Nintendo goes about it.

I don't care, as long as they continue to increase 1st party SP game portfolio, which is still not as hefty as it should have been.

Its good to know people on other platforms will still be able to play any game from the concord-verse.

Curse of the corcord be upon y'all.

Please be true for the love of god

I think it was an experiment worth doing. It’s a huge market but obviously one Sony couldn’t successfully tap. If the numbers were there, they would continue.

I actually found it interesting that they mentioned Marvel Tokon as a game that will be multiplatform in the same sentence as Marathon. Does that mean it will be full multiplatform including PC and Xbox like Marathon? Or just PC?

I misread the headline thinking it was about them moving away from live service

I was never bothered by them porting titles to PC and honestly didn't understand people being so opinionated about it, but if they found it wasn't worth the effort, then it is what it is.

Glad to hear they aren't using the same philosophy with multiplayer games, though.

Good, now let’s not waste any more studios’ resources on flopped or cancelled live-service BS Hermen…

@IOI We still have fair games to go....

This is great news and will further strengthen Playstation going forward. All they need now is a single player focussed acquisition, as right now there's no way they have enough studios to pump out 3-4 games per year like their competition.

Best news I’ve heard in ages!!! Please let there me more linear adventures..

PS6 over Helix any day for me..

@UltimateOtaku91 Quality > Quantity

Single player, story driven games - don't over think your past success.

Finally. The end of an error. Now lets turn this generation around and finish strong before there's any talk of PS6

See the fruits of this in 8 years lol

Huzzah!!! This is why we’re here! Thank you! After pulling myself away from ESO after over 10 years of play, it’s been so nice to enjoy all the single player games I’d put on the back burner.

Since ditching multiplayers, I’ve platinum’d Echoes of the End, Astro Bot, TMNT: Splintered Fate (2x), TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge (2x), Eternal Strands, Marvel: Cosmic Invasion (2x), and Absolum (2x). Currently 203 hours into Dragon’s Dogma 2. It’s so refreshing when you can just play it all at your own pace!

I was away on his mess this entire weekend and didn’t feel the anxiety I’d feel when away from ESO because single player games can’t progress without me. Yes, I acknowledge I might have a problem lol.

Hell yes pc players can enjoy the live service games but the single player games is for PlayStation owners only as it should.

Now the video game tourists can go back under a rock from where they came from.
Despite what social media has been saying for at least the last decade, video game exclusivity has always - and will always - make sense.
I'm not saying it's good for the consumer.
It's always been good for brand identity and competition.
The rise and fall of Xbox is partially linked to the state of it's exclusive games, or lack thereof.
Despite the amazing sales of the PS5 PlayStation needs to re-establish themselves as the place to be for video games. The live service experiment has been a colossal failure resulting in shutdown, layoffs, missed opportunities, delayed/cancelled games etc.
Maybe this industry has a chance to regain it's sanity now that both Xbox and PlayStation look to be attempting to right their ships.

@IOI live service games are the most played games on PlayStation so Sony need a few live service games of they’re own.

As long as this actually means that Sony is willing to revive older IPs for the sake of having more exclusives then I'm ok with this.

Also, as long as they aren't doing another shady 3rd party-exclusivity then it's all fine and dandy. 1st party exclusivity still makes sense. 3rd party games should remain multi-plat

@Jay767 and most of the most played live services are older games. Most people don't care to play live services that arrived at a party that ended years ago.

Bad news for consumers who are restricted to playing games on a single fixed piece of hardware.

This generally isn't so bad immediately after a console generation launches, but 7 years later you are getting a grossly inferior experience with frame rate and resolution sacrifices.

This will be exacerbated in the future, as with the loss of Xbox, there is no competitive pressure for Sony to be ambitious with console specs, or introduce new consoles when the old one gets long in the tooth.

We can expect more of the PS4 situation where the generation launches with relatively obsolete hardware, and drags on far longer than it should.

Yet there won't be anything you can do about it. You can't buy a better machine as the games are locked out from it. You and the game developers are stuck with what Sony give you.

It doesn't bother me personally, the main reason I have a modern console (outside of Nintendo) is for Capcoms games these days

What's more interesting is whether Hulst will stay in his position long enough to see any of these planned single-player games released. He has to be 1 fiasco away from the "voluntary retirement" that Ryan got.

@Ashina If Nintendo is going to do 3rd party exclusives like with Duskbloods I don't see any reason why Sony shouldn't be allowed to do some 3rd party exclusives either.

I’ll believe it when I see it. And just being exclusive and single player doesn’t mean it’s good, they still have to recapture the quality too.

Ok it may be a controversial opinion but it always seemed to me that exclusive games are a thing of the bygone console wars era and in the age of huge hardware costs all games should be playable everywhere so most people could enjoy them.

That said I am not a big fan of any first party games, except maybe retro SEGA due to nostalgia. The game I enjoyed the most was Horizon but the second game destroyed my enthusiasm for the series. Same for Spiderman. I haven't played any first party Microsoft game except a bit of the first Halo.

When I was reading the title, I read „Sony Reportedly Confirms Shift Back to PS5 Single Player Games“

Was a bit of wishful thinking I guess.

I think the reason why Sony is stopping PC ports is because of XBOX new system coming out we all heard the rumors what that system is going to be able to do and I know Sony don't won't their games being played on a rival console hardware and another thing it wasn't costing Sony hardly any money to port their games to the PC

@DennisReynolds marvel rivals and arc Raiders ain’t old both came out recently. Stop speaking for other people, most of you guys here don’t want any live service games because you not very skill at competitive games. live service games are still popular Sony do need few of they’re own because it won’t make financial sense to ignore live service space, especially when single player games are taking forever to make.

Hermen Hulst seems like the type of guy that would need to shoot himself in the foot before coming to the conclusion it was never a good idea.

@Balaam_ Shawn Layton made the decision to put single player games on pc not Hermen Hulst. So Hermen Hulst fix Shawn Layton mistake this time.

Don't think it really matters. The crossover is miniscule. Pc gamers that care, most likely have a Playstation too, if they don't they're most improbably unlikely to consider it, can't see many console players making any purchasing decisions based on whether there are pc ports so it really just boils down to the sales numbers which are seemingly not high enough for it to be worthwhile.

Sony ya messed up, all I wanted was the Demon Souls Remake on PC before ya changed stances lol.

Ah well, I can just toss the disc into my PS5 and play it, I've had it since I got my PS5 on launch day.

What Herman doing something good was not on my bingo card for today xD

@belmont respect your opinion but playstation main income is the huge ps hardware sales and for you to have this sales you need big exclusives like wolverine or yotei just look at xbox hardware sales no exclusives nobody cares in buying the console

Makes sense. Sad thing that the games won't be accessible for more people, but definitely better for Playstation's brand.

Thats
what Sony should have done years ago.i miss the only on Playstation box art.word up son

Rare thing that Hermen Hulst says that doesn't make me cringe.

It's news but I don't see why people are so hyped. It's not going to effect the consumer, we're still going to get the same games we would of if they were ported to PC. It's not like porting them to PC changed the quality of the games. I'm just assuming the numbers weren't as good as Sony hoped.

While this is expected, its not really pro consumer.

For me, this is my last generation for playstation. Ive always bought all consoles, and thier upgrades(currently ps5 pro with disk and 4tb ssd), but every generation i get less and less out of them.

Sony SP games have not really impressed me in a while either. Tsushima was good, but yotei felt samey. Same with spiderman 2. I never liked last of us, the show hasnt refreshed in ages and I can go on and on.

Its nit a sony thing, its a growing tired of the same thing.

I say all this to say that id have been happy to continue buying the one off ps title on pc(and xbox for that matter), but have no interest in spending 1k or more for a single game anymore.

Going to enjoy the rest of this generation as much as I can, but the hobby needs a good swift kick in the rear from my perspective.

@Jay767 I said most not all and my most played game on PS5 is a live service game so take your own advice and don't speak for all. Fact is most new live service games fail with Highguard being the most recent high profile example. Its even being reported this past week that many publishers are moving away from live service games because they aren't working. Hell just look at the recent most played games list that Sony put out that this site posted, it was pretty much nearly all older live service games.

I will enjoy watching Sony fall apart. They deserve it.

They should shift but to single player games development.

@Metonymy I mean the games didn't release day and date the PS versions did. They were at minimum months after if not longer. Not really much of an experiment to say they weren't going to sell much

@IOI you are aware most of those he had nothing to do with correct? i feel like he gets too much hate for no reason.

@DennisReynold Battlefield 6 marvel rivals and arc Raiders are not old games. like I said before Sony can’t just ignore the live service space it’s doesn’t make sense financially for them to. I think Sony should keep trying to create unique live service games and not just give up on games before they have an opportunity to take off. I put 150 hours into marathon it’s probably the best shooter I played in years. I’m glad Sony and Bungie isn’t giving up on the game even with the haters here and on twitter who didn’t even play the game.

So the 1 single player game they put out every year won't be ported to PC? Whatever will PC gamers do without them?

It does make sense for Sony to keep those limited games to themselves though, if they expect people to pay $999 for a PS6 to be playing mostly the same games we'll still be playing on PS5 for a few years after launch.

It's really not gaming's heyday right now. Feels like that ship has sailed, and is slowly taking on water and sinking. 😝

GOOD! Best thing Sony has done in years now... although this has Hideaki Nishino name all over it. You can tell the Japanese are back in control of PlayStation after Ryan did his best to reck it, although he did oversee the successful PS5 launch during Covid so I'll give him that.

I think next gen will be all about exclusives, Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft will all play the exclusive game apart from the usual suspects being cross gen. But then I think next gen we will see Nintendo doing it's thing, which they turned totally in it's head last gen with the Switch, Sony will follow the same old PlayStation console path, and Microsoft will chase the average Steam PC player and the enthusiast console players.

@rjejr Well.... considering people spend 600 or 700 to only play COD or Fortnite or Minecraft I think it is pretty safe to state the market will also pay 999 to play Sony's library of exclusive single player games too. Although PS6 won't cost 999, no where near it.

So only multiplayer games coming to PC? Ghost of Tsushima 2 has multiplayer, right? Please bring that to PC. Only First Party game I wanna play, but I don't wanna play it on PS5.

Making the correct move. Yoshida and Layden really cocked up when they put horizon and God of War on PC. At least they realised and are course correcting.

" marvel rivals and arc Raiders are not old"

You are merely proving Dennis's point in your attempt to show new live service successes are possible. (battlefield you cannot count as new anymore than you can Cod) so you include rivals, arc, and I'll even throw in the, hot for a very short time, hell divers as well.

That's three moderately successful live service games. The problem is you are ignoring the full picture. Go back just in the last 6 years. Pandemic to now. Add up all the live service failures in that time. It would be a list of dozens at the least.

Dennis is absolutely right. They are nearly all old legacy titles that represent something new for their time yet old games that have statistical proof the addicts hooked on them don't stray from them, the rare that do go back shortly.

In addition to that in the case of Sony's situation specifically you absolutely have to take into account the amount of money spent and wasted chasing these. It would take billions from a successful live service game for years to make up for what they wasted chasing them (likely 4-6 billion by now).

@S1ayeR74 im pretty sure ms will still put games on ps5 , if anything i could see a delay like they are doing with forza , and release it later on for ps5, but they aren't going to leave money on the table.

Great. Now all they need to do is get on with actually making some. This generation has been dire for first-party stuff. I didn't get my PS5 until about a year after launch thanks to the shortages and scalpers, but to be honest, if I'd known then what I know now, I wouldn't have bothered and just stuck with my PS4 Pro.

@twitchtvpat Lmaooooo and are you aware who has been the head of first-party studios since Jim Ryan’s took over as CEO and still remains even with Jim gone? Who personally green-lit and then cancelled a dozen games in the last few years? Who headed the acquisition of multiple studios that were later closed without one game ever released? In fact, are you aware of the one person who, also reported by Bloomberg, believed so much in Concord that convinced Sony to buy the whole studio, IP and every right to it?

Don’t know if you have selective memory or what but I’m of course talking about no other than good ol’ Hermen Hulst, to read some still trying to defend his poor job and terrible decision making is hilarious.

@twitchtvpat The language being used by their new CEO is suggesting they will be looking to keep games exclusive to Xbox and PC. We shall see but the new Gears game has not been announced for PS5.

@IOI I think the very fact Sony promoted him to share leadership of PlayStation only to then demote him again almost instantly says it all.. I wish they would fire him but I don't think they will.

@S1ayeR74 yes but even after she said that mulitple stories came out saying xbox has no plans on stopping ps5 game development , however its more possible you won't see day of releases instead of having the ps5 copy on delay. i'll double the post since i didn't want to respond twice , but the mess Hurman had to deal with when he was promoted i think he did a decent job. every one wants him to bring back this game or that game , but the reality is games cost tons of money , with some games costing over 9 figures. its just not realistic to make certain games ( as much as we want them including me) when not enough people are going to support and buy that game at launch and full price.

Hermen try to clean up his mess and make a 180 decision is not on my 2026 bingo card 😯

But the main question is IF a big chunk of PS userbase including people who keeps b*tching about Sony needs to make moreeee single player games gonna buy these exclusive single player games. OR they just talk the talk and not walk the walk. I mean...

• Astro Bot only sold 1.5 million copies despite it's GotY
• Saros estimates at 300K (which still good for Housemarque standard)
• Lost Soul Aside possibly ended as a flop
• GoW Sons of Sparta possibly sold decent

I'm not even counting Sony single player games from PS3, PS4, PSP, and Vita era that doesn't sold well like Gravity Rush, Knack, Medievil remake, Shadow of the Beast, Puppeteer, Tearaway, Folklore, Oreshika, Forbidden Siren, Soul Sacrifice, Jeanne D'Arc, Pursuit Force, Resistance Retribution, Heavenly Sword etc.

First time since his tenure begun that Hulst says something that makes sense 😯 of course is undoing the mess him and Jim Ryan started but a win is a win 🤷

@PuppetMaster you nailed it. Most of Sony’s big single player IP is on ice cause they didn’t sell well. You listed even more that I normally don’t list. PS is and always will be a casual console. It’s a cheap and easy way for people to play Sports games, COD,, GTA and Fortnite. Sony is making a steam charts widget and it shows what games people are buying and playing. They ain’t Saros and Little Big planet. Sadly most of the games I even like a PS for haven’t been made in 2 console cycles now and I might wait on PS6 and see if I even get any of those. Please make MotorStorm again Sony and Sly Cooper.

@PuppetMaster lost soul aside was a game they helped fund but is not their ip? not 100% on what they own from it , but i heard they did a bunch of updates to fix the game up , so its not as much of a mess then when it first came out , at some point im going to try it out.

@Yor-sama In principle I don't disagree but most people don't care about Sony's or, say, Capcom's finances if they don't work there. I know people that cannot afford gaming any more and have moved to buy games on discounts or use cloud services for newer stuff. Having all games in most platforms would lessen this a bit.

@IOI fair , but i didn't attack your opinion i just said my opinion.

Glad they spent most of this generation to realize what the fans wanted the entire time...

PC ports was fine by me. I didn't really play them other than Zero Dawn but I want more people to experience the awesome franchises we get on PlayStation so I think keeping it would be fine if it's making enough money to fund more sequels.

@SBBuds

It's news but I don't see why people are so hyped. It's not going to effect the consumer, we're still going to get the same games we would of if they were ported to PC. It's not like porting them to PC changed the quality of the games. I'm just assuming the numbers weren't as good as Sony hoped.

Honestly, it’s refreshing to see the PlayStation leadership finally admit that the real fun isn't playing the game—it’s the feeling of hoarding the sandbox. I mean, why would anyone want a bigger community to talk to or more people to appreciate a great story? That sounds suspiciously like 'sharing,' and we all know that the most 'elite' gamers are the ones who treat a platform like a gated community where the only reward for your loyalty is exclusivity rights. Truly, the quality of a game is measured entirely by how many people are barred from playing it.

@PuppetMaster

But the main question is IF a big chunk of PS userbase including people who keeps b*tching about Sony needs to make moreeee single player games gonna buy these exclusive single player games. OR they just talk the talk and not walk the walk. I mean...

How is a fan supposed to feel superior if the 'commoners' on PC are allowed to play the same games? The quality of the story really drops off once you realize someone else is experiencing it on an RTX 4090 instead of a console. It’s definitely about the 'numbers' and not at all about people needing their console to be a substitute for a personality.

@twitchtvpat Hurman is one of the reasons Sony is IN it's mess... I will never defend that guy for his actions. He should be fired IMO.

And stories can say what ever they like, facts are the Xbox CEO, the one who says what is actually going to happen is using language against putting their games on other platforms. We will see but I fully expect Xbox to go exclusive to PC and Xbox market next gen with some games, there is a more than large enough audience to do so there for them.

As long as they make sensible and balanced choices with the narratives all well and good. But of late there have been some Disney level of cobblers seeping into the big name titles. It's one reason I'm loving the fact Stellar Blade 2 won't have any Sony exec with his dirty paws getting involved at any point not that they did with the first one obviously!

Still hoping for Horizon 3.

@belmont from the player standing yes its better having all games everywhere but for Sony or other big companies like Nintendo they need exclusives to keep ppl buying their consoles
I can't imagine buying Zelda for ps as much I would love that I understand that's literally impossible and I'm fine with that

@Jay767 Nothing wrong with a few but they went insane what was it 10 games in the pipeline?