Death Stranding’s upcoming release in November is carried by enormous hype from fans of the game’s director, Hideo Kojima, and the fact that it looks absolutely mind-bending and different. Kojima entered a high-profile partnership with Sony Interactive Entertainment for Death Stranding, which lead to it utilizing the Decima Engine for development. For all intents and purposes, this should be a PlayStation-exclusive title, what with all of Sony’s input attached to it. However, it seems like this won’t be the case at all.
As showcased on a thread on ResetEra, it seems that Sony has removed Death Stranding from its list of PlayStation exclusives. A photo shown from the post proves this, with the help of an archived source from the Wayback Machine. Check out the original photo from before.
Now, if you check the official PlayStation site, Death Stranding is no longer under the Only on PlayStation banner, which boasts exclusives like Horizon: Zero Dawn, Days Gone and God of War. It’s important to note that this is available to view on all PlayStation sites, from Australia, to Portugal, France and Germany.
As much as people are surprised, it’s worth mentioning that Death Stranding was originally announced for PlayStation 4 and PCs, with Sony themselves stating the fact when the partnership with Kojima materialized back in 2015. This leads me to believe that Sony has only bought timed exclusivity on the PlayStation platform, and PC players are in for a treat with an official announcement for Death Stranding in the coming months.
All of that said, this kind of secrecy shines a light on Sony’s practices when it comes to dealing with this supposed timed exclusivity. There have been a ton of rumors leading up to the game’s actual reveal a few months ago pointing to Death Stranding also releasing on PC, all of which were just tip-toed around by Sony. Not to knock on Sony, but if they really wanted to hide the timed exclusivity, their efforts came across as rather poor – it would’ve just been better overall to announce it outright, since there are dedicated gamers who will find out the truth sooner or later.
Death Stranding will be released on November 8 for PlayStation 4. A PC version has not been confirmed just yet, but might happen during this year's Gamescom.
