Recently, discussions about whether Sony is still paying attention to the PC market have continued to heat up. According to people familiar with the matter, Sony has not developed a PlayStation game launcher for PC. Instead, it is building a streaming application that integrates games, movies, animations, and music. In the future, PC players who want to play exclusive new PlayStation games may need to subscribe to the service.
There have been rumors that Sony is developing an independent PlayStation game launcher for PC, which will force binding of PSN accounts, bypass Steam sharing, and may even prevent games from landing on future Xbox platforms. However, many industry insiders, including well-known journalist Jason Schreier, have denied this statement.
The whistleblower William R. Aguilar further clarified that Sony is not developing a PC launcher, but is building a unified streaming application - a one-stop platform based on cloud infrastructure that integrates games, movies, TV series, animation and music. Essentially, Sony plans to integrate PlayStation Plus, Crunchyroll, and Sony Pictures Core into a single ecosystem. This approach echoes Sony's previous desire to integrate PS membership levels.
For PC gamers, this adjustment could mean significant changes. It has been revealed that native PC ports of PlayStation stand-alone games are gradually decreasing. In the future, if players want to experience new exclusive works on PC, they will need to subscribe to this new service, and new works will not enter the service's game library until 1 to 3 years after the console is launched. However, multiplayer games are still expected to land on the PC platform in native form.
More details are expected to be officially announced during Sony's business unit meeting this spring, which is expected to be around May or June. By then, Sony’s strategic layout in the PC market will be clearer