They said they will release more old PS4 games on PC, and it's what they are doing. Obviously, if it works and they sell well, they will expand.
And, logically speaking, where do you think that will expand to? Days Gone was a 2-year interval between PS4 and PC. Death Stranding (a 2nd-party exclusive, mind, but still) was a six-month interval IIRC. There won't be anymore PS4-exclusive 1P games from Sony going forward that aren't cross-gen titles, meaning at the very least those games are day-and-date between PS4 and PS5.
We can infer from those aforementioned timing intervals and the reality that they'll be ceasing PS4 cross-gen support near end of 2022 (hopefully, if Ragnarok releases that year), and take a guess with a good degree of accuracy that those ports will include at least some PS5 1P exclusives going to PC. It is just a question of
when, not
if.
I mean at one point people were saying no PS 1P titles would be ported to PC whatsoever, and yet look where we are today. It's better to accept the likelihood of PS5 1P games getting ported to PC being a reality of high probability, than to stand firm against the idea when the trends point to the opposite.
After some years in the future they will run out of key PS4 games to port to PC that make sense to port them there, and once the installbase of PCs capable to run big ass AAA PS5 only games becomes the norm and not like now a tiny exception of the PC market, they will start porting old PS5 games. But that may happen at the end of this generation or in the next one.
No, this reads a bit like wanting to fantasize and will it into reality, but you're ignoring the trending data, and you're ignoring select quotes from Herman Hulst to do so. They have not
explicitly mentioned PS5 1P games getting ported, but the
logical assumption is that
if they can maximize revenue streams even higher by shortening the timing interval of ports "within reason", and they have already shown a timing interval as small as 2-years for another 1P game, then the chances are high that at least some of their 1P PS5 ports to PC will come within a maximum of 2 years from their PS5 release, some even shorter and, IMO, for highly MP-focused games (like the upcoming TLOU2 Factions),
then they will be Day-and-Date.
Remember the "mistake" leak with Demon's Souls Remake's advert at the September 2020 presentation that mentioned PC and "other consoles" (i.e PS4)? I don't think that was a "mistake", not the way some people want to think it was. They simply mentioned that part too soon, and while I think the PS4 version will be quietly scrapped (if it hasn't already), I can absolutely see a PC version of that game coming in 2022. I'd be willing to take a ban bet over it, actually.
Since for competitive AAA multiplayer, GaaS or F2P games it's very important to have a huge userbase, if they start releasing these type of games they will tank if PS5 and will see the need of releasing them faster on PC and eventually day one. So they will be their first AAA games to be released day one on both PS5 (or PS6) and PC and will be F2P, even if the first ones may be paid games or will be PS5 only.
I think you are going to be a bit surprised when Factions is PS5 & PC Day-and-Date; like you said, MP-centric competitive AAA multiplayer games thrive off large dedicated playerbases, and for reasons related to skill parity being kept within the community on multiple platforms, you'll want to get that game on said platforms Day 1.
So I don't think we'll be waiting for long until we Day 1 PS5/PC installments of 1P MP-centric AAA competitive games (especially shooters) from Sony, we won't need to wait for PS6 for that to happen.
And then after that, once players get also used to see PS games on PC, PS gets a huge market share bigger than now in the consoles market and their services like PS Now get a good install base on PC and mobile, they will start releasing all their AAA 1st party games day one on PS and PC. But since all these processes will take time, I expect that to happen in PS6.
Yes, for ALL 1P games between PS and PC, Day-and-Date
isn't going to happen for a long while and it will (if it happens) only begin with PS6. However, my argument is focused on the claim that some don't expect to see any 1P PS5 games on PC this gen or some of the more obvious picks (1P MP competitive AAA games) to be Day-and-Date or at least within 1-month/3-month intervals.
That is the point I am challenging in saying it's a false idea to hold onto when trends seem to show the opposite will happen.
Over 1500 million games have been sold for PS4, it holds the record of the biggest amount of games sold for a console in gaming history. And PS4 will continue selling games during at least a couple of years more. Sony has over 100M MAU and only slightly above 10M of them are on PS5.
What does any of this have to do with the main point of discussion? Yes, those are big numbers, but look at the percentage of what their 1P titles contribute to that. Roughly
18% of their software revenue comes from their 1P content, and that is cumulative. Also your PS5 MAU numbers are your own guess and not conclusive: # of systems sold != matching MAU. There's this thing called the scalping situation :/.
PS5 is selling faster than PS4 and according to Sony it has bigger user engagement than PS4. Which means player play more frequently, for longer periods of time, which ends meaning they spend more money on the console. Which means more games will be sold on PS5 than in PS4 and since market is evolving to GaaS, DLC and microtransactions, PS5 wll also generate more in DLC+MTX than PS4.
Okay but again, this isn't you tying anything into the main point of discussion. I feel the reason you're mentioning this is to try implying that with PS5 ecosystem revenue growth, that offsets the need or desire for them to expedite 1P PS5 port timing or frequency to PC...
....but there is no correlation here. The reason why is because all the milestones and figures you're referencing here pertain to a mixture of first-party and
THIRD-PARTY revenue and sales, and in terms of that we know that Sony's own games (cumulatively) account for about 18% of that share. 3P games account for the remaining 82%, and of that Sony only gets a 30% cut. There's also the element of digital/physical sales weighing into this: while digital copies tend to hold their prices, physical copies can be any mixture of original MSRP, discounted price, second-hand sales etc. The lower the sale price of that 3P game, the smaller Sony's 30% cut from that copy is.
So you're describing figures that are very healthy for the
PlayStation ecosystem, but aren't directly correlative to Sony's first-party
within that ecosystem, which could have a myriad of factors internally driving them to do more 1P ports of more recent titles to PC.
AAA gamedev costs are becoming too massive and risky. So in addition to rise the game prices and get GaaS focus in some of their AAA games to include DLC/MTX, they will also will need to make more frequent the PC ports and including their games on Plus/Now once completed -or almost- their main sales cycle to continue milking them specially with DLC/MTX.
Yes, agreed that increasing gamedev costs will have a big influence leading to some of the things you mention here. But, now you are agreeing with my main argument in a roundabout way: I've always said that if any of the new 1P content has the highest chance for ports to PC, it's the MP-centric games, things such as TLOU2: Factions (potentially).
The chief disagreement in
your side of that argument (at least as it appeared to me) was the notion those will be Day-and-Date on PS5/PC, or coming in rather short intervals staggered between PS5 and PC.
At the same time, they also will have to consider to make more shorter AAA games like Rift Apart, Miles Morales or Sackboy, going back to length times that were more common in PS3 in games like all Uncharted games exclusing U4 instead of making their AAA games longer and longer.
Why is that something they have to consider? Is this in relation to content for a "revamped" PS Now/PS+ service similar to some things David Jaffe has suggested? And, how does that tie into the main point we've been talking about here?
FWIW, if those type of games do become a thing (IMO I hope at least some of them do; I think some of Shawn Layden's comments from his recent interview sounded like somewhat cynical commentary on Sony's 1P games development trends and maybe a hint into what might've caused him to depart from his position at WWS), then they would be
perfect for driving consistent content to a PS+/PS Now-style merged service from Sony. However, those games would still need to be available for digital purchase at the very least (physical purchase as well if possible).
I think Jaffe suggested they NOT be provided with those additional ownership avenues, but that might just be me misremembering.
Yep, I think eventually will happen that. But before this, they will port the remaining old PS4 games they may see can fit in the current PC market. They want to port them before they start publishing PS5 games because first they would seen as too old and less cool because PC players would prefer newer stuff. And second because most current PCs don't have PS5 or higher specs so can't handle PS5 exclusives unless they get some major work, so they will need to wait until the majority of the PC userbase upgrades to way more powerful average PC.
The problem with this is that for some of those PS4 games, there have already been superior ways to emulate them for a while, and it's possible due to the amount of time Sony's denied bringing them to PC, a lot of the people who'd of bought them previously have just emulated them on PC and played them that way instead. That complicates doing a straight port of them or a port that only increases resolution and framerate, and for those select games might require a Remake-style treatment to guarantee big sales.
One of the games that falls in that category is Bloodborne, and in fact for more niche games like Bloodborne what I just mentioned above mainly affects them. Even so, there aren't too many other 1P games from PS4 they can bring before they run out of suitable material. UC4 and the expansion are candidates, as is God of War.
But outside of those, a lot of their other PS4 1P is either largely irrelevant for a PC port due to possible dormancy with the IP (
The Order 1886, Killzone:Shadowfall), possibly viewable as redundant and inferior to other competitive options on PC without some serious reworks that might tally too much to justify the effort (
Driveclub, Killzone:Shadowfall, The Tomorrow Children, etc.), or fall into either one or two of the aforementioned issues while also maybe not easily fitting into a brand image representation for PC they want (
Knack 1 and 2, for example).
One of the few exceptions to this IMO is Dreams; that is a game which seems perfectly suitable for a PC audience and could open the creative aspects of the game to a community which is used to doing tons of creative modding for games as it is. At the very least it should get a native port to PS5 in the near future and, while I think a PC port is inevitable, it most likely wouldn't be a Day-and-Date situation, nor is that really the kind of game which requires such TBH.
Once you get past that, though, the well for suitable PS4 1P games to bring to PC in a fashion that requires the least investments for maximizing revenues and profits kind of drops off sharply IMO, which is why I'm of the opinion that some or a good deal of their PS5 1P content will start to see at least shorter-staggered releases between PS5 and PC this gen starting relatively soon, and some games (namely the 1P MP-centric competitive titles with GaaS-style models) will be Day-and-Date between PS5 and PC, or short enough in interval to not cause any long-term imbalance in skill parity of the community for the game which can negatively impact it.
And as I've been saying, the trends more greatly support the idea of this happening versus them disproving it.