Sony's PC pivot reversal is a bold bet. They've spent years building PC goodwill—abandoning it suggests they're seeing data we don't.
From one of the other articles about this I read, they are seeing the same data but interpreting dumbly. They aren't seeing the kind of explosive sales they want during the period the games are locked to the Playstation and it doesn't pick up after they release it to other platforms because the hype train has halted by then.
Why they think just dropping other platforms will help more than simultaneously releasing them everywhere is pretty silly when that is their reasoning.
When almost half of their income comes from MTX and other services purchases, their first-party games were never, ever going to be simultaneous releases. Sony wants as many users platformed in their ecosystem as possible, and exclusivity is one of the ways you do that. This was a pretty simple ROI calculation, and when you're already losing Steam's cut, it would take solid performance to be worthwhile.
The above comment mentions goodwill, and that's another thing; Sony burnt up the goodwill they earned with PC users (and probably then some) with the PSN nonsense for these ports. It's like how Nvidia continually gets bad press for their gaming GPU division, at some point you gotta look at how it's affecting your overall brand.
I understand porting costs money but they kept selling old games for new game prices.
And at least some of their flagship games were ported to PC by a developer that didn't bother with optimization, leading to ridiculously high system requirements, so only a fraction of PC gamers would reasonably be able play them. (I'm looking at you, The Last of Us.)
High prices, late releases, badly performing ports, forced online accounts... Each of these mistakes is a slap in a potential customer's face. Together, they practically guarantee poor sales.
Maybe they think recent RAM and GPU prices will lead many PC gamers to start buying Playstations? I doubt it.
Yeah, if they already made me wait past GOTY podcast spoiler season, I'm far less willing to pay full price for it anymore.
Leadership is out of touch with the market/reality.
First, hardware costs are going way up. People will be less likely to buy multiple hardware platforms to play your exclusive games.
Second, I'm not buying a PS4 or 5 or 6 just to play Bloodborne. Literally the only reason I care about this.
But that's okay, there's plenty of other things to play and it's only getting better behind an emulator so you may lose a purchase there.
Corporate suits love ignoring player feedback and telling people they're wrong.
No, we're goddamn sick of enshittification and would rather PlayStation failed than give into it.
That's not going to get me to buy a PS6. PS5 is at least my only (UHD) Blu-ray player that I rarely ever play games on. Not buying another PlayStation in the future for not even averaging 1 exclusive game a year that I'd want to play
I'll never buy a PlayStation. So I will just not play their games or will play them if they come to PC. That's it.
Damn, I was really looking forward to Ghost of Yotei after falling in love with Ghost of Tsushima. I bet Sony is betting they can snag guys like me into a console purchase for whatever the favorite franchise sequel release is. Idk if that’s a Japanese cultural misunderstanding or just plain stupidity, but they’re gonna be disappointed.
This is why Xbox dying is a bad thing.
It was too little, too late, too expensive. Logically it would sell less than expected after a lame attempt.
This just in, Sony announces they HATE money!
A bit sad for me that I won't be playing the next Horizon game. Oh well. Enough other games to play. Maybe I'll buy the latest god of war game if the price comes down enough. I'm patient.
You do not need to feel bad. The next Horizon game is a live service grift.
Putting games on PC works for third party publishers because it works perfectly with their business model. It works for Microsoft because they whole sale lost the console market and are slowly slinking their way out. Sony is still a huge contender in the console space and has no plans to cede any share. While it’s great for the consumer to have PC releases it hurts the console business. Regardless if you have a small sect of people who would never buy a console to begin with. For me I own a ps5 as well as a PC. I am more likely to buy the game on PC. Sony from there loses out on the maximum cut they could get from the game. They lose out on me needed to have ps plus to play online. Not to mention if the ps6 does cost close to the same as a PC having games on both leaves little incentive to buy the console.
I am not to mad about it, I rarely play my PS5 now I’ll have more incentive to buy the games knowing I won’t get a PC release.
During the PS2 era, there were lots of reasons that a game might end up exclusive to one platform even if there was no deal involved. Now the only exclusives are the ones Sony makes themselves, so there's maybe one or two of those per year, and that doesn't guarantee that those one or two are going to be your cup of tea, let alone justify buying a dedicated machine for $500 just to play those few games. As opposed to a PC that plays every video game that isn't made by Sony or Nintendo. It gets harder and harder for that $500 to make sense, and the PC ports Sony had been doing was any attempt at all to recoup the money that they spent on blockbuster games that weren't growing their console install base.
I called those “soft exclusives” and I argue it killed Sony in the 7th console generation. Metal Gear , Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto, Devil May Cry, Ridge Racer were all exclusive because the publisher made enough money on one console. Then the Xbox had its small time to shine. And boy did Sony regret it..
(GTA and MGS eventually had releases but much later on)
The 7th gen was exactly where this started to break down, in large part because these machines are all so, so similar these days, rather than having a completely different set of capabilities. I think consoles as we knew them years ago are just reaching the point where they've outlived their usefulness. Sony can try to fight it by holding onto exclusives, but I think it's actually only going to hurt them.
It’s a catch22. After that generation things became a lot easier to develop for across the board. At the same time I believe became easier to develop the console. Rather than build chipsets entirely in house you just contract a chip manufacturer. And shockingly when your competitor uses the same company things get samey.
I don’t know if this was ever avoidable. The capabilities of modern day processors would be hard to fathom console companies building their own unique variants on. I’d argue if they did consoles would cost even more now than they already do.
It’s interesting to think what could have been. Definitely would have made console reveals more interesting. And even ports more interesting. But I can’t sure for sure better ..
Forbidden West doesn't require a PSN account as far as I'm aware. At least I didn't have to create one.
There was a time where it did. A few other games did too. They changed the stick into a carrot, and now a PSN account just unlocks a few extras. But like I said, that hurt my trust as a consumer.
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