Sony will no longer be porting its single-player games from PlayStation to PC. Our author Kevin thinks this is short-sighted. Because in the end, it’s not just us gamers who lose out.
Life could have been so beautiful.As a longtime fan of Japan, I was already really looking forward to the PC port of Sony’s latest Japanese adventureGhost of Yoteifor the PS5. The port of its predecessor, Ghost of Tsushima, ultimately took the game to a whole new level thanks to frame generation and other technical niceties. Just imagine how wonderful Yotei could have been on the PC.
But that dream is over now.According to leaker reports,Sony is scrapping the nearly finished PC version of the gameand making a radical strategic shift: In the future, no more single-player games from the Japanese company will be ported from console to PC. PlayStation management has now announced this to the staff as well. And yet Sony had only just significantly ramped up the pace of its PC releases.
I consider this change in strategy to be a mistake.Because this means that we, as players, will not only miss out on a whole host of great single-player titles like a new Horizon or God of War, but Sony may also have miscalculated financially.
What is this all about?
But why is Sony taking this step in the first place? After all, the Japanese company had only begun gradually bringing its titles to the PC a few years ago and had even accelerated the release schedule for them recently. So what’s behind this sudden U-turn?
American journalist and industry insider Jason Schreier recently explainedin a podcast, Sony simply does not consider its PC game sales significant enough to make the ports truly worthwhile for the Japanese company. The games sold significantly better on the company’s own console than on the PC.
However, there is likely much more to it for the PlayStation bosses than just business considerations. Because, in my view, Sony has never really tried to maximize profits from its PlayStation exclusives—otherwise, they would have released the games on PC simultaneously rather than with a delay. Many players wait years for these titles because they simply don’t want to play them on the console.
The next console war is imminent
Rather, Sony is likely now focused on defending its own brand when it comes to exclusive games. This is because competitor Xbox has already confirmed that the next generation of consoles willtoward a merger with the Windows PC.
This could also make PC games playable on the Xbox—and thus PlayStation ports as well. Sony is likely to try to prevent this at all costs. It’s actually absurd—after all, PlayStation has clearly won the console war.
However, Sony likely has another competitor in its sights that is expected to become significantly more powerful in the coming years:Steam operator Valveis also pushing its way into customers’ living rooms with its upcoming Steam Machine—and thus into the traditional console market.
Steam already has both the largest game catalog and with around 147 million monthly active usersthe largest user base of any gaming platform. Add to that regular sales and free multiplayer games.The Steam Machine could therefore become a real problem for PlayStation.
No wonder, then, that Sony wants to keep its games off Steam and is once again focusing on exclusive titles that you can only play if you also buy a PlayStation. In that sense, it might not be too far-fetched to claim,the next console warbetween Sony and Valve is looming.
You should buy a PlayStation!
Sony already has a problem with Steam’s market power on the PC, because the PlayStation bosses’ profit calculations likely also factor in the fact that they have to pay Steam a hefty commission of at least 20 percent for every sale
If a title sells several million copies, that adds up to a hefty sum of money that Sony “loses.” If, on the other hand, you buy exclusively from Sony—getting both the console and games from a single source—Sony can pocket the entire sales value. So the Japanese company is likely also aiming to set the course now,to ensure that its next-generation console sells well.
However, listing PlayStation titles in the Steam store is unlikely to be a money-losing venture for Sony. Even with the commissions Sony pays to Valve, the PlayStation makers are raking in hundreds of millions on Steam. Helldivers 2 alone has sold over 13 million copies on Steam so far and is likely to have brought Sony at least 350 million euros despite the commission.
While Sony does not publish exact sales figures, even the publisher’s best-selling single-player game, God of War, has sold at least 5 million copies on Steam and is likely to have brought in over 150 million euros for Sony. From a business perspective, this move is therefore likely less sensible; Sony probably simply wants to stake out its own ecosystem here andis voluntarily foregoing PC revenue to do so.
A risky move. Becauseaccording to the latest report from market researchers at Newzoo, the PC market is expected to grow significantly in the coming years—thanks largely to Steam—and even overtake consoles again. So it’s quite possible that Sony is betting on the wrong horse here, should the next PlayStation not sell as expected.
A sentence with X—that was probably a bust (Nixxes)
More specifically, this decision also threatens jobs. I wouldn’t be surprised if the first layoffs at Sony’s in-house porting studio, Nixxes, were to occur soon. After all, why would you need such a studio if you no longer plan to port anything? So Sony could shut the place down sooner or later, just as they did a few weeks ago with their remaster studio Bluepoint Games.
That would be a shame, because the team at Nixxes is a master of its craft. The PC ports of Ghost of Tsushima,Ratchet & Clank: Rift ApartorMarvel’s Spider-Mantook the base games to a whole new technical level and bear the hallmark of people who know their craft.Closing a studio like this would mean simply giving up a wealth of expertise.
If Sony were to port a game again in the future, it’s safe to assume that this port would be handled by an inexperienced external team and would be of significantly lower quality than what we’re used to. And who knows, maybe Sony will realize its strategic mistake in a few years and row back toward the PC in the long run… But then they’d have to painstakingly rebuild a new porting studio from scratch.
So there are quite a few arguments against removing PlayStation titles from the PC. After all, it’s not just us PC gamers who lose out with the renewed fragmentation of the gaming market.Developers also lose a portion of their potential target audience as a result.
Personally, though, what annoys me the most is that I’ll miss out on some real story heavyweights in the future. With Ghost of Tsushima, The Last of Us, and God of War, Sony has really delivered some major hits in terms of single-player games in recent years. Many of us have been more than happy to enjoy these games on our home computers.
Although I had already played some of these titles on console, I later even bought Horizon and Tsushima again for the PC so I could enjoy them once more with improved graphics. But it seems we won’t be getting a new Horizon or God of War on PC in the future. But given current hardware prices, I seriously doubt I’ll be buying a next-gen console.
