With Sony’s multiplatform strategy becoming a priority, it’s understandable that some people are asking how much this will hurt PlayStation consoles.
It’s been five years since Sony started moving internally developed first-party titles from PlayStation 4 to PC. 2020 seems like a long time ago, but that was actually when Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition was released on Steam and the Epic Games Store (it became unavailable, replaced by Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered with mandatory PlayStation Network account usage). Since then, Sony has taken PC ports a bit more seriously, as evidenced by its acquisition of PC porting specialist Nixxes Software in 2021.
In theory, PC ports of PlayStation games reduce the unique selling point of PlayStation consoles. But in practice, Sony is not afraid of losing PlayStation 5 users to the PC, as a Sony spokesperson said in a Q&A at the end of 2024: “In terms of losing users to the PC, we have neither confirmed that such a trend is underway, nor do we see it as a major risk so far.”
The PlayStation 5 shipped around 65.5 million units in the year to November, and if you compare that to the PlayStation 4 at the same point in its life, it shipped 73 million in its first four years, so it’s not such a bad result in comparison. Especially since the pandemic initially held back the company’s stock. So you can’t really blame the PlayStation 5’s performance on the fact that it doesn’t have any real exclusives these days.
Hiroki Totoki, Sony’s Chief Financial Officer, said last year that the company wanted to be more aggressive with PlayStation PC ports and shorten the time between PlayStation 5 and Steam releases. This is evidenced by Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, which will be just 15 months from its PlayStation 5 debut when it launches on PC on January 30. Before that, Spider-Man: Miles Morales was a PlayStation exclusive for over two years.
We’ll see how long Sony thinks like this.
Source: GameRant
