The full article that was hinted at in interviews last week.
There are likely a few reasons behind this shift. One is that several recent PlayStation games have not sold well on PC.
Interesting…
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.
I love Horizon: Zero Dawn. I have not played Horizon: Forbidden West. By the time it came to PC, Sony started making PSN logins necessary to even authenticate the game in the first place, which is basically just the worst kind of DRM. They’ve reverted this policy, but now I don’t trust them. They put out a handful of games on GOG where I don’t have to trust them, and I’ll probably still pick a few of those up one day, but Forbidden West isn’t there. Seems to me that they have no idea how badly they screwed up this rollout themselves. Oh, Uncharted 4 didn’t do too well on PC? Where are the PC versions of Uncharted 1-3? Where can I play the original God of War trilogy? I’m not buying a PlayStation no matter how many exclusives you lock up there, so I’ll just continue to not play your handful of exclusives.
Anyway, that’s my two cents.
These all sound like reasons for Sony to get out of the console market. (And maybe start making PCs that go head to head with Steam Machines.)
You want some reasons why they shouldn’t? The PS5 is wildly successful. Moving to PC means they need to migrate the PS store to PC with all their players and their libraries as well, probably renegotiating on publishing rights for every game on PS, spending all that money, and then ultimately end up with fewer customers, 70% on Sony titles and nothing from third parties sold to people playing on Steam.
Or they can just keep doing what they’re doing and get 100% on Sony titles, 30% on everything else, and remain the dominant gaming destination for most households.