Earlier this week, reports surfaced that PlayStation would not bring its flagship single-player games to PC, even allegedly canceling a Ghost of Yotei port. There was much debate around why, but certainly one of the crucial reasons may simply be that its games didn’t perform well on Steam.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, as an illustration, sold 16 million copies on PS5, but only 700,000 on PC, and a recent Newzoo study (conducted for GamesIndustry.biz) found that the delayed release timing may explain this disparity, highlighting a serious flaw in Sony’ strategy.
“Newzoo’s data shows that PlayStation titles ported to PC after their console launch typically see PC account for around 13% of total players in the primary three months across each releases,” director of market intelligence Manu Rosier said. “By comparison, when comparable triple-A titles launch concurrently on PC and console, PC contributes closer to 44% of players in the identical period.”
Sony can have come to the identical conclusion as this evaluation, and decided to scrap PC exclusives altogether fairly than launch them day-and-date to bridge the gap in sales, especially with the appearance of hybrid gaming PC consoles. As we already saw with the ROG Xbox Ally, the Steam Machine and next-gen Xbox could have access to PlayStation exclusives out of the box, meaning that future PC ports would also mean Sony launching its games on rival home consoles.
In fact, this is simply speculation, and Sony has not yet confirmed that its PC plans have been scrapped.
Interest In PlayStation Games On PC Is Wavering
When taking a look at the general sales of every game, Newzoo also discovered that the novelty of PlayStation ports on Steam is wearing thin, as newer launches have proven far less successful.
” individual titles, the sooner wave of PlayStation PC releases captured relatively strong player shares on the platform,” Rosier explained. “Horizon Zero Dawn reached a 22% PC share (~4M lifetime players), God of War (2017) 14% (~3.5M), and Marvel’s Spider-Man 14% (~3.8M).
“Newer ports have generally seen smaller PC shares, including Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart (8%), Horizon Forbidden West (7%), God of War Ragnarök (6%), and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (5%). Ghost of Tsushima is a notable exception at 11% PC share (~2.1M players), likely supported by being the franchise’s first PC release.”
There are undoubtedly other aspects at play beyond release timing, equivalent to the games launching at full price long after the hype and marketing cycles have ended, in addition to the shoddy state of some ports souring the perception of PlayStation on PC. Nonetheless, what’s interesting is that while Sony has reportedly pulled plans to port its single-player games to Steam, it’s going to allegedly proceed to publish live-service games across multiple platforms day-and-date, as we saw with Helldivers 2 and now Marathon.
It might make sense for Sony to proceed with this model, because it has proven way more successful —Helldivers 2 still often tops the Steam charts. But staggered launches haven’t worked for single-player system sellers, and if the choice is between releasing them in every single place directly — which is able to soon include next-gen Xbox and the Steam Machine — or remaining tied to 1 platform,then it’s unsurprising Sony has chosen a hybrid approach: single-player games remain exclusive, and multiplayer games launch cross-platform.