IN CONTEXT: Shawn Layden is the former chairman of SIE Worldwide Studios and former president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment America. He was the executive who brought several major PlayStation titles to PC. In contrast, today's management appears to have very different views on releasing games on other platforms.
Shawn Layden recently shared a few interesting insights about the now-concluded initiative focused on bringing original PlayStation games to PC. Layden suggested that bringing PlayStation games to another platform was essentially a marketing strategy rather than an attempt to generate significant additional revenue.
Porting PlayStation games to PC was, in his view, an ideal way for Sony to extend the reach of its intellectual property to audiences that would otherwise overlook it. Broader exposure to Sony's original IP would expand awareness of its characters, stories, and worlds, helping build a larger audience and potentially extend those franchises beyond gaming into other media.
Layden argued that releasing a game on PC 18 months after its original console launch cannot be considered a "lost" console sale. PC gamers, he said, were unlikely to purchase a PlayStation console solely to play a single game. The former Sony executive cited the God of War and Horizon series as prime examples of this strategy, noting that both are single-player franchises owned by Sony.
