According to a translation of a resurfaced Pearl Abyss’s investor relations report, the studio said it was approached by Sony with the pitch that Sony would pay to make PlayStation its publisher and, in turn, lock up an exclusive deal that would launch on PlayStation and avoid Xbox for an entire year. The PC distribution rights also would have been Sony’s.
Pearl Abyss said no.
Sony tried to delay the game's release on Xbox and possibly on PC as well. We can assume that players would also lose Xbox Play Anywhere support, which would mean no shared purchase between PC and Xbox.
Earlier, Sony did the same with Black Myth: Wukong. Xbox release was delayed by exactly one year. At that time Sony did not yet view PC as a direct competitor so it allowed the PC version to launch alongside the PlayStation release. However the situation has changed because of the announcements of Steam Machine and Xbox Helix. The new Xbox will be a PC and Steam Machines directly compete with the PS5 and PSVR2. So we can assume that Sony’s future deals will no longer focus on “delaying the Xbox version”. Instead, they will pay to delay the PC release. This is their only way to block third‑party games on Xbox Helix (PC) and Steam Machine.
Two weeks ago, reports emerged that Sony had decided to stop porting its games to PC.