Ex-Sony exec opens up about efforts to bring PlayStation hits to PC

Enlarge (credit: Collage by Aurich Lawson)

Sony has a long history of keeping its first-party games behind the walled garden of console exclusivity.

So the company’s choice to bring its PS4 hit Horizon Zero Dawn to PC in August 2020 felt like a precedent-changing move away from that barrier to entry. It represented a seismic shift for a publisher protective of its wide array of console exclusives.

But as former CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment Shawn Layden tells it, adopting a more open strategy for porting first-party titles to PC was actually an easy decision.