Look, it’s time.
Sony has nothing to fear regarding PlayStation sales.They have never had a console generation that has tanked in sales, and demand for new PlayStation consoles has only increased in time, with the PS5 only failing to set records because supply can only meet a tiny fraction of demand due to current component shortages.
So, it’s time to expand the PlayStation brand where yes, Sony should take a page out of Microsoft’s book, and start releasing its games on PC alongside PS5 on day one.
This is all coming up right now because potential Game of the Generation, God of War, has finally made its way to PC, allowing many players to play it for the very first time if they didn’t own a PlayStation before this.Sony has started putting more and more of its exclusives on PC, but the lag time is still years after the original release.It’s time to change that.
I’m not even saying that Sony has to go all the way down the Microsoft rabbit hole.Right now, when you buy a game on Xbox, you automatically get a free copy of the game on PC, or vice versa.As nice as that would be, I’m not even saying that Sony has to do that.Simply allowing the games to be sold on PC at launch would be a good enough start.
I don’t think I’m alone in this sentiment, not just among fans who would like wider availability of PlayStation games, but the same can be heard from PlayStation devs themselves.
Being interviewed about God of War on PC , game director Cory Barlog said that the push for this has become incredibly strong among PlayStation studios:
“I think it was the collective of studios all over saying this is a really good idea.We should be looking into this,” Barlog said.”Eventually, I think it reached that tipping point.When we had sent so many suggestion box suggestions that they were like, ‘I’m tired of hearing all this.Fine, we’ll do this.'”
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For generations now, Sony has made a calculation that PlayStation should be the only place where you can play PlayStation games, and so you need to buy a PlayStation console to do just that.But the industry is changing.Xbox is running full steam at this trend, selling not just Xboxes, but allowing its games to be played on PC or streamed to mobile devices day one.
PlayStation, in contrast, looks stuck in the past and porting games to PC years later is just the babiest of baby steps in the right direction.
PlayStation does not have anything to fear.If anything has been proven the last decade, it’s that everyone still very much wants to buy video game consoles.Microsoft has been doing this “day one on PC” thing for a while now, and the Xbox Series X/S are still setting sales records for the brand.
On the dev side, it’s easy to see why they want this.Devs do not get anything from sales of PlayStation consoles, but they would get more revenue from additional sales of the game on PC.
And fundamentally, I just think many of them want…more people playing their games.They worked hard on it, why shouldn’t PC players also get to experience it? Especially given the caliber of almost all PlayStation exclusives, this would seem to do nothing but strengthen the PlayStation brand overall.
If there was some evidence that offering games on PC was destined to crash your console sales, I might reconsider this position, but absolutely nothing about the market indicates that, and PlayStation should consider this idea sooner rather than later, before Microsoft keeps building a big head start in this area.
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Paul Tassi.
