Is Sony pulling out of the PC market?

ic1male

ic1male

ic1male

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This from Bloomberg's Jason Schreier.

Sony Group Corp. no longer plans to release its big PlayStation 5 games on PC, a major shift in strategy that sees the video-game maker returning to console exclusivity after six years of flirting with multi-platform releases, according to people familiar with the company’s plans. Online games such as Marathon and Marvel Tokon will still be released across multiple platforms, but single-player titles such as last year’s samurai hit Ghost of Yotei and the upcoming action game Saros will remain exclusive to PlayStation 5, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to talk publicly about the company’s strategy.

The people cautioned that things could change in the future due to the unpredictable nature of the video-game industry and that Sony’s plans are constantly shifting. But in recent weeks PlayStation scrapped plans to bring Ghost of Yotei and other internally developed games to PC. Two games made by external developers but published by PlayStation, Death Stranding 2 and the upcoming Kena: Scars of Kosmora are still planned for release on PC this year.

There are likely a few reasons behind this shift. One is that several recent PlayStation games have not sold well on PC. A faction within PlayStation has also expressed concern that releasing their games on PC risks damaging the console’s brand and will hurt sales of the PlayStation 5 and its successors, according to the people familiar with Sony’s inner workings. For decades, Sony’s tactic for selling PlayStations was to keep tentpole franchises exclusive to its own consoles. In 2020, it pivoted and began bringing games to personal computers via Steam. Since then, the company has put most of its biggest franchises on PC, such as God of War and The Last of Us. But the strategy has been muddled and confused many players. Most PC releases arrived months or years after the games came to PlayStation. The cadence was never consistent, and the announcements appeared to be haphazard. The company also upset PC players by asking them to create PlayStation Network accounts to access many of the games.

Now, Sony is looking to take a more straightforward approach: going back to console exclusives. Sony’s two rivals in the console space have taken different paths. Nintendo Co. has released almost all of its games solely on its own Switch hardware, while Microsoft Corp. has turned into a multi-platform publisher, releasing everything on PC and many games on PlayStation. Another factor behind Sony’s pivot may be Microsoft’s next Xbox, which is rumored to use Windows and be capable of playing PC games. Some executives at PlayStation may not be thrilled at the prospect of one of the company’s flagship games like God of War running on the next Xbox console.
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If this turns out to be true, I'll be flippin' livid. Saros was really one I was looking forward to.
 
It be a shame if true as I much rather play them on my PC but if there's any truth in Microsoft's next console being able to play pc game I understand why Sony wouldn't want to release their flagship games on pc
 
I don't have a console anyway, so if they don't release it on PC then they don't get my money.
I don't see how releasing for PC has hurt their PS-5 sales though as, even with PC releases, they have something like 70% of the console market, right?
 
Guess I wont be playing any future Sony games, I briefly owned a PS5 which I purchased to play FF7 Rebirth on launch, sold it immediately afterwards.

Zero interest in consoles, all of the games/dev's that used to be console specific that I care about have been doing extremely well on PC.
 
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ttaskmaster said:
I don't have a console anyway, so if they don't release it on PC then they don't get my money.
I don't see how releasing for PC has hurt their PS-5 sales though as, even with PC releases, they have something like 70% of the console market, right?
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Must be scared stiff of Steam Machine and Xbox-is-a-PC...
 
Got to be due to both the next Xbox likely having Steam on it, and also Steam releasing their Steam Machine which would be able to play Sony games if they released them as they currently do on Steam. Sony likely don't want their games available on all their competition, which I guess is fair. You'd think though that they'd just release them on PC like a year or two later when the sales are going to be poor on the console as everyone has already played it that wanted to (for the most part).
 
I wonder how long they will keep to this when they know they can rack in loads of cash for not much effort.
I’m sure capcom said that over 50% of there revenue comes from pc now.
 
I can understand why Sony would do this from a business point of view. I'm very much of the opinion that 1st party exclusives are critical to the success / viability of a console platform. From a consumer perspective, though, this news complicates matters. With increasing hardware costs will many people be able to afford owning multiple platforms ? I'm fortunate that I have a high-end PC, PS5 Pro and Switch 2 but I was considering bailing out on Sony ( for the PS6 generation ) if they continued to release their games on Steam. Now this gives me some thinking to do - but my decision will still depend on the cadence of 1st party releases ( which has reduced considerably over the last 6 years ) and how appealing the games are in general.
 
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eeii said:
I wonder how long they will keep to this when they know they can rack in loads of cash for not much effort.
I’m sure capcom said that over 50% of there revenue comes from pc now.
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Reports suggested Sony made ~$2.4 billion from software sales on alternative platforms over the last 4 years, however that only represents approx. 2% of their total revenue. I presume Sony believe that releasing their games on Steam will have an adverse affect on their brand ( console sales etc ). As for Capcom, they stated 50% of RE9 sales were on PC.
 
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Gutted as I was looking forward to Wolverine and Yotei. Add not getting GTA6 at launch and I’m tempted to just buy another PS5 Pro.

Most of the games I’ve enjoyed on the PC are PS games, rift apart, forbidden west, uncharted, last of us, Spider-Man 2….

At least Phantom Blade is coming to PC as that looks awesome.
 
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xaldub said:
I thought you had a PS5. Did you sell it and move over to PC exclusively ?
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I’ve had a couple but sold them as I just prefer my PC (even though it’s a potato) and was very welcoming of their PC ports. But I won’t be getting another console anytime soon.
 
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