Recent reports say Sony is scaling back its plan to bring major PlayStation single-player games to PC, going back to focusing more on console exclusives. New estimates via The Game Business are starting to paint a picture as to why PlayStation feel now is the time to make that change.
The main reason seems to be the numbers. Even if former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida said he has not seen “any proof” of Sony stopping PC releases, the sales tell a different story. Big titles like God of War Ragnarök had nearly seven million players on PlayStation at launch, but its PC version sold only around 300,000 copies in its first month.
It’s not just that one game either. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 sold about 260,000 copies on PC and Horizon Forbidden West around 230,000 PC units. Standing apart as an exception, the huge Ghost of Tsushima reached 710,000 players in its first month. Player activity is also seemingly lowering, with Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 reaching around 28,000 peak players on Steam, compared to about 66,000 for the first game.
Due to these declining sales and lesser performance than the console releases, PC ports might become a declining part of Sony’s business. Sales are much lower than the original PlayStation releases, though this difference is also affected by timing, since PC versions usually come out much later. At the same time, releasing these games on PC at launch could might hurt PlayStation console sales, so for Sony, console sales and its ecosystem are likely much more important than the short-term cash from a PC port.
Finally, with the emerging market for “PC-console hybrids” such as Steam Machine and Project Helix being talked about, Sony may want to keep its biggest games only on PlayStation. Being able to play Sony exclusive games like Marvel’s Spider-Man on an Xbox-branded console would likely shake the gaming giant who have been extremely hesitant to provide Microsoft’s rival platform with their own releases. For now, nothing is official regarding this change to approach, but as more information becomes available, we’ll make sure to let you know here at GameObserver.
In other PlayStation news, Shuhei Yoshida has spoken about his departure, saying that he was “fired” from his role in 2019 because he refused to comply with “ridiculous” requests from then-CEO Jim Ryan.
