Will Sony Copy Microsoft and Make Playstation a 3rd Party Publisher?

[Shadow1980]

No.

Even before this week's massive layoffs and studio closures, Xbox was already in less than ideal shape. It's been pretty clear for a good number of months now that maximizing hardware sales is no longer a priority and that the long-term strategy is to maximize software sales. I'm assuming that's still the plan going forward even after this week's events. I doubt MS will axe Xbox as a brand. But it's clear that there's no hope in regaining the market share and hardware sales volume they lost last generation.

But with PlayStation, that's still a strong global brand. While there was a bit of a roadblock earlier this generation due to stock shortages, the PS5 has almost caught up with the PS4 worldwide, and is actually ahead of the PS4 in the U.S. & Japan. There's no indication that the brand is losing steam. While there have been some Sony-published games that have since come to Xbox, there are important caveats. MLB The Show was forced by Major League Baseball to be published on other platforms. Sony didn't have a choice in the matter. As for Death Stranding and Helldivers II, they were both developed by third-party studios, and only published by Sony. In Death Stranding's case, it's entirely possible that Kojima negotiated its release on other platforms after a period of exclusivity. In Helldivers II's case, it's also a live service game that could benefit from a larger player base, and Sony did say earlier this year that, for that very reason, they will look into releasing live-service titles on other platforms on a case-by-case basis.

I doubt we'll see any actual first-party PlayStation games come to Xbox aside from maybe the odd live service title. We aren't going to see God of War or Horizon or Gran Turismo or Intergalactic showing up on Xbox or Switch. Sony probably doesn't want to devalue a strong brand by doing what Microsoft is doing and going full-bore "release everything everywhere we can." Even in the cases where they've released first-party single-player titles to PC, it wasn't until long after the PlayStation release, and they never came to other systems.

Last edited by Shadow1980 - on 04 July 2025