Sony games on PC
Sony is looking more and more interested in the PC market: this spring the company will release Days Gone on Steam and other PlayStation games will arrive on PC in the future, as confirmed by Jim Ryan in a recent interview.The opening of the Japanese company towards this platform did not go unnoticed and many analysts commented on the situation, including Daniel Ahmad of NiKo Partners. In his opinion "Sony does not see the PC as an enemy to beat" and the path taken by the company is "taken for granted, to be honest."
Ahmad underlines how this move is in fact successful because it allows Sony to monetize with games from the PlayStation catalog that have now peaked in console sales. Furthermore, the arrival of certain franchises on PC could also push the sales of PS4 and PS5</a>, moreover it allows to sell certain games even in markets such as China or Korea, where the PC is king at the expense of consoles.
This is a different strategy than that adopted by Microsoft, Sony has not announced at the moment its intention to publish its games simultaneously on PlayStation and PC, on the contrary the Redmond house makes its titles available at launch on both Xbox and Windows. According to Ahmad, such a strategy could lead consumers to discover certain series and become interested in any sequels coming to consoles, thus generating further possible hardware sales.
Sony is Bringing PlayStation Games to the PC
Sony built its videogame empire on platform exclusives, but the firm revealed this week that it will be porting PlayStation games to the PC. Is this an implicit admission from Sony that Microsoft’s cross-platform strategy is the correct one?
“A few things [have] changed,” Sony’s Jim Ryan told the British version of GQ for some reason. “We find ourselves now in early 2021 with our development studios and the games that they make in better shape than they’ve ever been before. Particularly from the latter half of the PS4 cycle, our studios made some wonderful, great games. There’s an opportunity to expose those great games to a wider audience and recognize the economics of game development, which are not always straightforward. The cost of making games goes up with each cycle, as the caliber of the [intellectual property] has improved. Also, our ease of making it available to non-console owners has grown. So, it’s a fairly straightforward decision for us to make.”
The first PS game coming to PC in 2021 is Days Gone, the publication reports, and it’s expected “this spring.” But that is just the first of a “whole slate” of PlayStation games coming to the PC this year and beyond. (And this isn’t technically the first PS port from Sony: It published Horizon Zero Dawn on PC last year.)
Other tidbits from the interview: Plans for a movie based on the hugely successful Uncharted game series is “very much on track,” as is a TV series interpretation of the game Last of Us.
But Ryan had some bad news for would-be PS5 owners: Supplies of the console aren’t expected to keep up with demand until the second half of 2021, well after Microsoft expects Xbox Series X|S supplies to catch up. And Sony has delayed the next Gran Turismo game to 2022.