Sony's strategy: PC ports should encourage people to buy a PS5
31/5/2024
Translation: machine translated
Keep the Playstation attractive with exclusive titles or reach a larger audience? At the moment, Sony is focusing on a compromise with time-shifted PC ports to answer this fundamental question. The Playstation boss explains how this should boost sales of the PS5.
Sony's release of Playstation games on the PC is intended to encourage PC fans to buy a Playstation. Sounds strange - but it's true. The PC ports are intended to help solve Sony's problem with exclusive titles. Hermen Hulst, co-CEO of Sony's PlayStation business from June, explained the strategy behind this in a Q&A session on 30 May.
How long do you want to wait for great single-player titles?
Hulst addresses a fundamental dilemma of exclusive titles: If Sony only offers in-house developments from the Playstation studios on the Playstation, the potential buyer base and sales are reduced. If the in-house developments are released on all platforms, the Playstation loses its appeal. Until a few years ago, Sony favoured the first option: if you didn't own a Playstation, you had to do without outstanding story-based single-player titles such as "The Last of Us" or "Horizon Zero Dawn".
However, that has changed. Sony gave several of the earlier exclusive titles a PC port two to three years after the Playstation release. PC gamers can therefore play the "Horizon" series, "Ghost of Tsushima" and "The Last of Us" on their favourite platform. However, Hulst did not give a fixed time frame for the PC release. The PC gaming community is still waiting for "The Last of Us 2" from 2020.
The PC ports are strategically motivated, as Hulst explains: on the one hand, Sony can count on delayed sales revenue from the PC gaming community. On the other hand, the company hopes to entice PC gamers to buy a Playstation 5: Playing the PC port should make them want to be able to play future follow-up titles right at release - without having to wait years for a port again.
Will this work? This strategy hasn't worked for me so far. The graphics on my PC are simply better and I find the stick controls for controllers atrocious.
Multiplayer appears immediately on the PC
The strategy is different for live service titles, as Hulst confirms. Multiplayer games such as "Helldivers 2" will continue to be released on PC at the same time as the Playstation release. These games are primarily financed by micro-transactions. Sony therefore wants to appeal to as many fans as possible, while the titles receive new content every few months and therefore remain relevant. Splitting the players between two releases does not make sense here.
Apropos: Microsoft currently has a similar problem with exclusive titles - only different:
Header image: Shutterstock/Gustavo Preiss
Feels just as comfortable in front of a gaming PC as she does in a hammock in the garden. Likes the Roman Empire, container ships and science fiction books. Focuses mostly on unearthing news stories about IT and smart products.