Sony’s withdrawal from the PC space with its single-player PlayStation releases is a topic of much discussion lately, as the company removes references to PCs from its studio descriptions to pivot back towards their flagship console. In all this discourse, a new and particularly insightful piece of information has emerged, which is how much the PC ports of PlayStation games were earning.
As found on the LinkedIn profile of Jerry Bliu (not linked for privacy), the PC Planner and Insights Manager at PlayStation between 2021-2023, he shared that the PC-dedicated group within PlayStation earned $300 million net revenue for the gaming giant within those three years. Whilst the number may seem meaningless out of context, it’s quite significant if we dive deeper into the specifics of what this reveals.
Within those three years, there were nine PC ports of PlayStation Studios titles. These are: Days Gone, God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Returnal, The Last of Us Part I and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. These games combined therefore made $300 million, averaging at $33.3 million per game.
Whilst these are good extra earnings for games that had already been released before, the numbers do pale in comparison to their PlayStation console counterparts. Within two years, Marvel’s Spider-Man on PlayStation 4 had a gross sales revenue of $734 million, as was seen in Insomniac’s major 2023 documents leak. Within 3 years, the same game and eight others made less than half of this total on PC.
Combining what we know, it seems that the PC ports of PlayStation games do make significant money, but perhaps not enough to justify the loss of the games as exclusives to the home console. It’s also worth considering that this revenue reveal doesn’t include the behemoth that was Helldivers 2, which released in February 2024.
Moving forwards, it strongly seems like Sony is pivoting the PlayStation brand back towards the PS5 and future PS6 as the only home for its single-player titles. How this plays out in the ever-evolving industry remains to be seen, but we’ll be reporting on it all here at GameObserver.
