Ex-PlayStation boss Shawn Layden says Sony's PC pullback doesn't make sense

Shawn Layden — former president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment America — has pushed back against Sony's reported decision to pull back from PC releases, saying the strategy never made sense as a pure revenue play to begin with, and he's not sure why the company is abandoning it now.

Speaking with YouTube channel PSI, Layden explained that the original push to bring PlayStation games to PC was never about direct sales — it was about building awareness for Sony's IPs ahead of their expansion into film, TV, and other media. "Not necessarily because they're going to buy a PlayStation," he said. "I wasn't that crazy." His argument: if you want to launch a Horizon TV show or a God of War film and have it land with a broad audience, you need people outside the PlayStation ecosystem to already know those characters and stories. Keeping everything locked to console and then trying to leap into mainstream media was, in his words, "going to be a hell of a jump." On the concern that PC ports devalue the brand, Layden was dismissive — a roughly 18-month gap between console and PC release means anyone who genuinely wanted the game day one already bought a PlayStation. "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." As for Sony's current reasoning, he was blunt: "I don't know what they're thinking."

The backdrop here is a significant strategic reversal. Sony spent years as a console-exclusivity hardliner before gradually opening up to PC, and the results were strong enough that former SIE Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida once described the PC business as "almost like printing money." Now, according to reports, Sony is walking that back — Marvel's Wolverine, Intergalactic, and God of War Laufey are all expected to skip PC entirely, with the platform reserved mainly for live-service titles going forward. The official reasoning, per reports, is that PC versions were inconsistent in quality and weren't generating enough revenue to justify the cost. Layden's comments land in a broader moment of platform tension: Microsoft is also reportedly leaning back into console exclusives to shore up the Xbox brand, though Xbox chief content officer Matt Booty has said PC versions will still ship alongside console releases.

Layden's candid "I don't know what they're thinking" is the sharpest public criticism yet from someone inside Sony's former leadership circle. Whether Sony revisits the strategy remains to be seen, but with PC gaming revenues up 12% year-over-year and the market crossing $200 billion for the first time, walking away from that audience is a call that will keep getting scrutinized.