This raises the question of how long this initiative to support local developers will remain viable.

Sony’s decision to stop porting its games to PC came as a surprise, but it’s not exactly breaking news. Bluepoint Games’ technical director speculated that Sony likely fears Valve more than Xbox. Alinea analyzed broader PlayStation game sales but also uncovered interesting PC market data. For example, 42% of Death Stranding 2’s PC sales came from China, making it the game’s largest Steam market. The analytics firm also noted that China is the most important market for Stellar Blade on Steam.

According to Steam’s latest hardware survey, 39.48% of Steam users have English set as their language, while 21.85% have Simplified Chinese set as their language. This makes Simplified Chinese by far the second most popular language, as the share of every other language is in the single digits or lower. However, it is difficult to determine exactly how many people this represents, as some of these accounts belong to internet cafés. Some estimates put the number at over 30 million. Regardless of the exact number, this significant player base cannot be ignored just because we want people to buy a PlayStation 5 to play Marvel’s Wolverine.

Shift Up, the developer of Stellar Blade, will not release the game’s sequel in partnership with Sony. During a Q&A session about financial results, the studio said it is developing an optimal market entry strategy to maximize sales and reach a broad global audience from day one. The term “broad global audience” likely refers to the Chinese audience. Additionally, Alinea noted that the game’s release on PC did not negatively impact PlayStation sales. In fact, the opposite was true; following its PC release, Death Stranding 2 experienced its best two-week period on Sony’s platform since its launch. While it was on sale at the time, the same discount had been applied twice before with less effective results. Stellar Blade, which wasn’t discounted on the PlayStation Network when the PC port launched, also saw a simultaneous increase in PlayStation 5 sales.

A PC release increases the number of people streaming the game and generally boosts online discussions. Word of mouth remains an effective way to sell any product, regardless of its language. But what about the China Hero Project? This initiative supports Chinese developers in creating games for PlayStation.

Source: PCGamer, Substack, Steam, VGC