I alluded to it in the Opening Night Live subheader that Sony has bought Insomniac Games, developer of 2018’s Marvel’s Spider-Man. However, I’m dumb enough that I thought they already were partially owned by Sony because they made Ratchet and Clank, one of the greatest third-person platformers ever. Do not @ me on Twitter with, “Oh, but Jack and Daxter,” or “Uncharted.” Naughty Dog were good at one thing and that’s Crash, end of discussion.

My rant aside, every one of those games are single-player focused. Uncharted may have a multiplayer mode in it, but it is hard to find a Sony exclusive that’s multiplayer-focused. The most recent example of something that is typical to have a multiplayer heading is Killzone Shadowfall, which had a great single-player mode with your robot friend. If we look at Sony’s official list of exclusives for the PS4, Sony might as well be asking “What is a multiplayer? and Why does everyone else like it so much?”

That’s what makes what I’m about to say so weird. Shawn Layden, Worldwide Studios chairman, told Bloomberg that Sony are continuing with the strategy of exclusives, especially with single-player games. The interesting piece of this is, “exclusive titles will still be a part of the company’s strategy, but that some games – particularly multiplayer titles designed to be played on personal computers – may see broader distribution.” This suggests that while we know Sony are making their great single-player experiences off in the corner, they are looking to copy everyone else’s homework.

I can’t begrudge them for that, though it will be interesting to see how this plays out for the audience. Currently, multiplayer gaming on consoles consists of lugging around a horrifying monster called PS Plus, Xbox Live Gold, or Nintendo Switch Online. All of these systems gate off multiplayer gameplay from players, though on PC you are free from that as long as you have a router. How Sony expects some players to pay their subscription fees while others don’t could be interesting for many fans.

On the matter, Layden said: “We must support the PlayStation platform — that is non-negotiable,” as Sony not featuring Sony titles would be weird. “That said, you will see in the future some titles coming out of my collection of studios which may need to lean into a wider installed base,” he went on to state.

As the new consoles are a year away, one could only assume these changes will be coming for the PS5. We also know that Sony and Microsoft are working to make cloud gaming a reality, so one could suspect this is part of the partnership.

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