Sony Pulls Back From PlayStation Games on PC 42
Sony is reportedly abandoning its recent push to bring major PlayStation games to PC and will instead keep most single-player titles exclusive to the PlayStation 5. According to Bloomberg, the shift back toward console exclusivity may be driven by weaker PC sales and concerns about diluting the PlayStation brand. From the report: 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.
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.
Fine. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll just continue to purchase games from GOG on sale. My "to be played" backlog is already crushingly large, I'm not at a loss for something to play.
Also, SONY? I still remember that rootkit you and BMG hit people with. Sucks when your customers have long memories, doesn't it?
Re:Fine. (Score:4, Informative)
Came here to mention that rootkit too. #FUCKSONY
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#METHREE
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Rootkit is the least of their problems (Score:2)
Playstation aside the quality and reliability of their electronics is mediocre at best now after they decided to pursue mass market instead of hi(ish) end stuff back in the 2000s. However apparently nobody told them that if you sell kit no better than some chinese OEM stuff then you have to price it similar. The days of resting on brand laurels are long gone particularly if you've shot it full of holes with rootkit and unreliability issues.
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I woud not ever buy anything from sony anyways and consoles are for kids and people who don't know better
the real reason consoles exist is to allow classist people to manipulate markets and cheat consumers
the solution is don't be a consumer and don't buy anything from trannational corporations, which is why PCs are so much better for us than consoles are, it's real freedom, we can build a cheap second hand PC, obtain free and open software and those evil classist people cannot cheat nor steal from us
this is
Sony: "I don't like money" (Score:2)
Also Sony: "Our stock price needs a bump so we're laying off 5,000 workers."
Which games is it about (Score:2)
Problem with "we sell on PC a long time after game is sold on consoles" means unless the game being sold like this is good, you don't get many additional sales.
Because if the game is average or bad, people have many other games to play. If the game is exceptional however, it will generate a lot more sales because people will believe it being worth their time and money.
Ghost of X series is likely a good example here. Ghost of Tsushima was an amazing game. Ghost of Yotei rode on its coattails and sold ok on P
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How do you define good? Helldivers 2 *DOMINATED* on PC. It sold more than twice as many units on Steam after it's PC release (6 months after the PS release) than it did on console. 13million sales vs 5.2million on the Playstation.
It's kind of hard to gatekeep in that way.
Re:Which games is it about (Score:4, Interesting)
Chances are the real reason is that PC sales were cannibalizing PS5 sales. I mean if I want to play God of War, I either play it on PS5 for wait for it to come out on PC. And if that's the only game I want to play, hey, I might as well wait. Why buy a PS5 for one game?
Sony's just hoping that since you have a PS5 you'd buy more stuff in the ecosystem. So they want to cancel all the PC games to force people to buy into the PS5 ecosystem. Chances are people are simply waiting for the PC ports rather than buy a PS5 to play those games immediately.
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Could also be the cost of producing PC games isn't worth it. So many different configurations, custom DRM system required. Players tend to expect the game to look better than the PS5 version too, and be moddable. It's a lot of work for a player base that isn't even all that interested in console ports, seemingly.
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Chances are the real reason is that PC sales were cannibalizing PS5 sales.
And the result is what? You still bought a Playstation, and you still bought the game. Cannibalising one for the other is not a negative for Sony. Sony have their money either way.
By the way you want to discuss canibilising? The PS5 is not available in all areas. In fact the Playstation network is available in less than 70 countries around the world which is why the shit hit the fan when Sony announced Helldivers 2 would require a PSN account - people who bought the game would have been unable to play it. T
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No, the result is that some number of PC gamers did not buy a Playstation because that wasn't required to play the handful of titles they wanted from Sony's publishing arm. PC game sales cannibalize PS5 hardware sales. Keep in mind that also means any non-exclusive titles they buy are definitely not bought as PS5 editions, so Sony is losing out on licensing revenue they may have made if there were a console in that player's house.
It's also worth pointing out that the functional difference in both form fac
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Good as in players don't feel disappointed in the game after playing it for a few hours.
A very common problem for sequels.
Helldivers didn't start falling off until developers started patching out fun for the monetization reasons a few months into it.
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The game didn't get any less fun as a result of you not spending money to speed run the purchase of DLC. Also your complaint is clearly not remotely supported, and in fact is countered by my very post. If the game wasn't "fun" as you say then the release on PC wouldn't have massively outsold the initial PS5 release.
The gamers literally voted with their wallet in this case just to disagree with your premise.
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Gamers buying games cannot vote with their wallets on this subject, because return window on steam is 2 hours played.
Many other platforms are even worse in this regard.
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Those sorts of games have done very, very badly on PC lately.
What I find is more of the trend is full priced AAA games have done very badly recently. Lower priced indie games like Silksong have done way better than these games.
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When that much money is on the line, one person doesn't get to control it. It becomes design by committee, which dilutes any artistic endeavour. All the bits might be polished, but it's soulless. Indie games often have individual artistic control, and are made as passion projects,
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Silksong is a massive exception to pretty much all rules. This is demonstrated by it breaking Steam for a few hours when it came out.
Steam hasn't been broken like this in well over a decade to the best of my knowledge. They're really good at load balancing.
Remove the one outlier from your numbers and parse the numbers again. Indies are doing great right now, but they're not eclipsing big names by any stretch of imagination. Right now, the best selling single player game on steam is Resident Evil Requem, fol
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Remove the one outlier from your numbers and parse the numbers again.
Schedule I, Blue Prince, The Bazar, . . .
There are a lot of indie games that outsold AAA games. Also AA games that cost less than $60 are selling because they are good and are less than $60. ARC Raiders, Helldivers, Palworld.
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None of these are even close to Silksong's launch day. Frankly, none of them are even in the same ballpark. They're fun games, and they sold well, but volume of their success vs silksong demonstrates just how much of an outlier silksong was.
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Again, my point wasn't that some exceptional indies aren't outselling some shitty AAA games. But only a tiny handful of indies are Silksong, and only a tiny handful of AAA games are Concord.
Sounds right. (Score:2)
Cost of development + cost of support + cost of dilution of hardware sales made on the basis of exclusivity...it's not cheap. There has to be a good reason to do the cross platform thing. Unless you trapped yourself into it justifying a major acquisition you need to make the case for it, rather than against.
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I was indirectly pointing out the contractual agreement Microsoft made with regard to Call of Duty. They agreed to continue producing it for Sony platforms. It was necessary to get the acquisition approved. Otherwise they would not have agreed to it.
I also didn't say cross platform wouldn't be done. I just pointed out it needed justification.
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...it's not cheap.
...if you aren't retarded. The cost of supporting additional platforms is next to nothing unless you have no fucking clue what you are doing.
Not to mention this is the same company who, not too long ago, thought it would be a good idea to have up to *twelve* AAA live service games by 2025. 8 of those were canceled. Why? Because most live service games suck and are expensive to maintain. Sony's leadership has zero clue as to what it's doing or what people want.
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"The cost of supporting additional platforms is next to nothing unless you have no fucking clue what you are doing."
Do you believe that the cost to support the Windows platform is anything like that of fixed-hardware platforms? Really?
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If you built your game right, it really isn't.
Re: Sounds right. (Score:2)
What of you built the game to squeeze every smidge of performance out of the PS5?
It seems to me that'd leave a significant amount of development for the PC.
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What of you built the game to squeeze every smidge of performance out of the PS5?
You either built the game wrong or had a bad concept design to begin with.
Games that run poorly regardless of hardware because conceptually bad game design (or over-reliance on a game engine the studio barely understands [i.e. Unreal Engine 5]):
-Monster Hunter Wilds (and most other recent Monster Hunter games)
-Cyberpunk 2077
-Dragon's Dogma 2
-Borderlands 4
-Hogwart's Legacy
-Elden Ring
PC ports from console that performed better than their console counter-parts despite the new hardware variations:
-God of War
-Ho
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Once upon a time, this was a very strong argument, the architecture of the hardware and software of personal computers were just so different from each other.
Now the processor and GPU architectures of the consoles are identical to what can be found with PC.
On the software side, there are differences mostly due to Sony's self-inflicted decision to continue to have a proprietary graphics API, though if you use Unreal or Unity, then you don't have that much to worry about.
On the UI side, supporting keyboard+mo
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The reality is consoles are single hardware ecosystems where the game needs to be tuned to the specific hardware
You are already building your game wrong if it needs to be specifically tuned to singular, static hardware.
So while going from PC to a console is not so bad as you are just cutting down the complexity, going the other way is a mammoth undertaking.
Only if you had no foresight that you might want to port the game to PC and basically have to redo half the code to make a barely functional port. Which is almost always 100% of the problem - especially when Sony is involved. They do not build their games with the PC port in mind regardless of whether the PC port is planned ahead of time or not. There are plenty of games out there that work on Xbox, Pl
Fine, emulator it is. (Score:2)
Converting BSD system Calls to Windows (or Linux) system calls so that a BSD-X86-64 programs run faster in a virtual environment is a manageable problem. And both PS4 and PS5 are essentialy, at their very core, X86-64 PCs with AMD Graphics running BSD.
Given that Sony takes sometimes years to prot from Playstation to PC, by the Time they would have ported the game, the emulators will be ready anyway.
I mean, even the Weird architecture of the PS3 (Cell Processor) was emulated eventually, and a BSD-> Window
Sad (Score:2)
I was very surprised to see the last Ratchet & Clank game ported to PC. It was so good I played through it twice. My first time engaging with the series in 20-something years.
I was looking forward to spending some money with Sony in the coming years, but I guess not. More likely now to grab an emulator and try some of the PS3 Ratchet games.
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Re: Sad (Score:2)
I was really hoping they'd release God of War 1-3 on PC (it seems like it's about time for them to resell a remaster).
Oh no!, how sad, oh dear (Score:1)
Actually, it's for my choice of controller. (Score:2)
I play PlayStation games on PC so I can easily use an Xbox Elite controller.
This used to be important to me... (Score:2)
There was exclusive games on the PS5 and them coming to the PC was good. RDR2, God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn. They were good. Now about five other PS5 games in the mystery is gone. Horizon Forbidden West was crap. I never managed to get Spiderman past the first five minutes. This is no great loss now...