PS5 Exclusive Returnal is Coming to PC Soon

Another PlayStation-exclusive title is making its way to PC. Housemarque’s big-budget roguelike Returnal launched exclusively on PlayStation 5 last year, but now it looks like the game will be released on Steam sometime in the near future. Nothing has been outright confirmed by either Housemarque or Sony just yet, but Returnal’s PC port is an open secret at this point.

In May, a mysterious new game was added to SteamDB called “Oregon.” While working titles are listed all the time on SteamDB, eagle-eyed fans quickly spotted references to Returnal’s Tower of Sisyphus endless mode and Atropos, the planet on which the game is set. Shortly after, sources showed VGC footage of the game running on PC. To make things even more clear cut, the PC settings menus for both Returnal and Sackboy: A Big Adventure were leaked at the beginning of June.

The Oregon Steam listing has continued to receive updates since then, getting nearly daily updates since the beginning of July. The game’s achievements have been updated with new localizations as of late, adding 19 new languages. The references to the Tower of Sisyphus and Atropos still remain as well, in addition to mentions of co-op, Helios, and a timer for a player’s current run.

It’s pretty open and shut that this is a PC version of Returnal, and the daily updates suggest that the port is coming much sooner than you may think. Sony’s upcoming PC releases include Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, which launches in August, and Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection, which still has yet to receive a release date. Both games were previously exclusive to PS5, with Spider-Man Remastered being offered as a bonus for owners of the Ultimate Edition of Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection launching earlier this year.

Porting PlayStation games to PC seems to be a core part of Sony’s new strategy for this generation. Horizon Zero Dawn marked the first PlayStation Studios title to come to PC (not counting Death Stranding, a PlayStation exclusive developed by a non-first-party studio). Following its release in 2020 were Days Gone the following spring and God of War the year after. As stated above, this year is the biggest PlayStation PC push so far, with Spider-Man and Uncharted making their Steam debuts very soon. The recently revealed The Last of Us Part 1 will also get a release on PC following its PlayStation 5 debut in September, although the PC version has yet to receive a date.

If Returnal launches on PC as soon as fans are expecting it to — and the daily Oregon updates suggest it will — then there will be 4 new first-party PlayStation titles available on Steam this year. Sony is so committed to making its games available on PC that it launched a PlayStation PC label to identify the games on Steam.

Still, the publisher’s home console remains its number one priority. In a 2021 interview with PlayStation Studios head Herman Hulst, he stated “I want to emphasize that PlayStation will remain the best place to play our PlayStation Studios titles at launch. But we do value PC gamers, and we’ll continue to look at the right times to launch each game.” New games will still come to PS5 first, evidenced by The Last of Us Part 1, but PC ports are to be expected now. It’s only a matter of time before games like God of War Ragnarok and Horizon Forbidden West end up on Steam as well.

Console exclusives coming to PC is becoming an increasingly common practice, with even non-first-party games making their way to Steam or the Epic Games Store eventually. The most recent example of this is the Persona series, with the previously PlayStation exclusive Persona 5 Royal coming to PC, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox (including Game Pass) on October 21. Quantic Dream’s titles like Detroit: Become Human and Heavy Rain have also received PC ports as well, and the studio’s upcoming Star Wars Eclipse will be multiplatform too.

Returnal is available now on PlayStation 5 (and PC soon).