Sony has been actively focusing on capturing the PC Games Market, Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, and the soon-to-be-released Uncharted are just a handful of the PlayStation-exclusive titles that have been ported to PC in excellent fashion by Sony over the last several years.

And It might be preparing to advance with its own proprietary game launcher. The files of the newly published PC version of Marvel’s Spider-Man include references to a “PlayStation PC launcher,” as reported by VGC.

At this time, Sony’s PC releases may be found on Steam and the Epic Games Store, which are both likely where you would anticipate finding them. The mention of a separate PlayStation launcher, though, raises the prospect that Sony may follow in Activision and Bethesda’s footsteps and sell its games in its own walled garden.

My assumption is that Sony will offer an intermediate launcher similar to Ubisoft’s Ubisoft Connect. This launcher displays whenever you open one of Ubisoft’s games from Steam or Epic and features a separate user profile. Considering that PlayStation’s titles are now available on Steam, my hunch is that Sony might do the same.

The discovery of a reference to a PC launcher comes soon after a story of a similar discovery suggesting that Sony may be planning to allow PC players to connect their PlayStation Network accounts to its titles, with in-game benefits offered to those who do so. This is consistent with the incentives offered by Ubisoft via Ubisoft Connect.

Sony has strengthened its position on PC by publishing five first-party exclusives during the last two years:

• Complete Edition of Horizon Zero Dawn (Aug 7, 2020)

• Days Past (May 18, 2021)

• Predator: Hunting Locations (Apr 29, 2021)

• The God of War (Jan 14, 2022)

• Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered (Aug 12, 2022)

Moving to a proprietary platform might enable PlayStation to make more money from fewer sales, since the publisher pays a 30% cut to Valve on all Steam purchases (decreasing to 25% after $10 million earned, and 20% after $50 million; and a considerably less burdensome 12% to Epic for EGS sales).

And we’re not discussing sofa replacement here: Sony forecasted in May that it would earn $300 million in PC game sales in 2022, a significant increase over the $80 million and $35 million it received in 2021 and 2020, respectively.

Even with its own launcher, I expect that Steam would continue to account for the great bulk of PlayStation PC purchases. But a standalone launcher could simplify the process of integrating PlayStation Network functionality into its games, for example, and possibly even gamer-friendly features comparable to Xbox’s Play Anywhere, which grants multi-platform access to games regardless of which platform they were purchased for.

Interestingly, this is not the first time a PlayStation PC launcher has been mentioned: XboxEra Podcast co-host Nick Baker mentioned a PlayStation PC launcher rumour in February. Baker stated, “I’ve been told they’ll have a PC launcher, and I imagine they’re contemplating integrating cross-buy with that. So, if you purchase the PlayStation version, you also receive the PC version, much like Microsoft’s Play Anywhere.