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[analog_future]

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to put together that when you release the same game 2 years later for full MSRP, it's not going to sell like hotcakes. Frankly for how late Sony is releasing these titles, and at full MSRP, they're selling pretty well.


With that said, if they want to move more units, they either need to start releasing PC versions day 1 or release them for a reduced price when they come to PC.

 

[noise36]

Games released years later for full price, its not surprising really is it. While they do some great games I have finished and enjoyed on ps5 , their output overall is big time overrated.

 

[Interfectum]

Old games at full price. I'd imagine Spiderman 2 sales would be huge on Steam if it was day/date.

 

[Vick]

If someone decides Needy Girl Overdose is worth their time more than The Last of Us 1 - and there will be people who think just that, no matter how much you put the latter on a pedestal - that will be one more lost sale.

Why do many of those posts seem to imply you can only play first party titles on Consoles?

I'm sure there's just enough selection on the 8552 games you can buy on PSN.

I've never seen the other thread, so can't comment on it, just calling out your obvious bias. What thread?

So you didn't even read the opening post, yet felt the urge to post your slick take on me. That's next level pal.

By far the most shared opinion in the other Thread was that those kind of games are overrated by PS fans and therefore not appreaciated by the more objective PC users, which is however something the slightest scrutiny reveals as pure platform warring of the lowest order:

 

[Killer8]

"Devaluing the brand" yet PS5 is selling just as fast as the PS4 was. No one is not buying a PS5 so they can play some several year late ports on PC.

A late port is also a late port. You're never going to capture the original release's momentum due to a lack of hype and marketing.

Even still, these sales numbers show legs. Horizon hitting over 3 million sounds pretty good to me. The rest of the games will surely catch up over time.

 

[poppabk]

They are succesful for the most part, anyone thinking they were going to equal the PlayStation sales was delusional.
a) No advertising - I know we all think we are immune to this but companies arent spending hundreds of millions on ads because they dont work. To put it in perspective the cost of Sonys Super Bowl ad would cover basically the entire cost of porting all these titles.
b) Full price, years late. I guarantee these sales numbers dwarf the full price playstation sales for the same time period. That's why comparisons with Nintendo are off base - they are still selling full price copies of WiiU ports no-one has even close to an evergreen market like they do because...
c) Different audience - Sony has the 3rd person, over the shoulder, story driven game audience sewed up. If you really enjoy these type of games then you have a playstation or you are a masochist. So you are left with the people who are just kind of interested in these games and double dippers.

It's basically a free revenue stream that allows them to extend the revenue generation of catalog titles. The only people upset about this are ride or die playstation fans who invest too much of their own self worth in their loyalty but they are never going to quit the platform anyway.

 

[DrFigs]

It's not because a PC player wants to play Blooborne he's willing to buy a console to play it. The line between PC and consoles is not as porous as some people make it looks like. And PC players are patient.

Also in any case someone that already played Bloodborne if he's a Souls fan would probably be willing to buy it again on PC for the technical benefits. Of course the only way to verify it is to release it, maybe i'm wrong.

7,5 million lifetime is good but still significantly less than 10 millions in 4 years for DS3 and 20 millions for ER, especially for games in that range of budget. If the game sold 2 millions more it would be more significant than the 3 millions of God of War.

I have no idea about what the statistics are about share of pc gamers who used to be console gamers or who happen to own a console. But there are 120 million ps4's out there. i think its safe to say many of these ps4 owners also play on pc at one point in the last 8 years (since bloodborne came out). Basically i think the idea that there's a hard wall of separation between console and pc gamers is outdated. I think there's a lot of anecdotal evidence for this; the audience for these games are clearly not as distinct as they once may have been. Clearly this is something Sony is cognizant of: why would they be concerned about day 1 releases cannibalizing sales if the audiences were so wildly different.

 

[Torrent of Pork]

Ask yourself this, would you ever accept a two year old PS5 port of a game at full price?

 

[Hugare]

I think its all about audience

If Nintendo would sell games on PC, they 100% wouldnt be as successful as selling them for the Switch.

Mario would still sell a shit ton (tho less than Switch), but stuff like Metroid or Animal Crossing? I doubt that they would sell so well.

People who want to play these games buy a console to play them on Day One.

Btw, I'm one of those who think that "Sony shot themselves on the foot" and etc. by porting games to PC. They are devaluing their brand.

If Mario was also released on PC/Stadia, for example, it would take some away from that mentality of it being a Nintendo franchise. Maybe a small dent, but it would cause some damage.

I think way less of Xbox as a brand after the 360 era, for example, 'cause that gen was the last one where they actually had "Xbox only" exclusives.

 

[FrankWza]

The vast majority of people who really want to play these games have a PS5 already. Also, PC gamers are known to be “frugal” when it comes to paying full price for games that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make. Maybe there’s not a lot of money left over after buying a 4090.

 

[DryvBy]

Why? I'd assume it's because PC gamers don't play many games. The median for games this year was 5 games. That would include the f2p market which is huge for PC.

Edit: some PC master racers pointed out this was incorrect. They were right. It's 4 games, not 5.

 

[Midn1ght]

I think its all about audience

If Nintendo would sell games on PC, they 100% wouldnt be as successful as selling them for the Switch.

Mario would still sell a shit ton (tho less than Switch), but stuff like Metroid or Animal Crossing? I doubt that they would sell so well.

People who want to play these games buy a console to play them on Day One.

I actually think Mario, Kirby and co wouldn't sell great on PC. Maybe their first release would but I don't think the PC audience care all that much for cute platform games, Sackboy didn't do great.

Zelda, Smash Bros and Animal Crossing would probably do better, just my personal opinion.

 

[FrankWza]

Why? I'd assume it's because PC gamers don't play many games. The median for games this year was 5 games. That would include the f2p market which is huge for PC.

Armchair deving is a hell of a drug. Gotta compare screenshots and get them rgb lights synced

 

[FrankWza]

Ask yourself this, would you ever accept a two year old PS5 port of a game at full price?

 

[kurisu_1974]

The recent leaks painted a pretty underwelming picture for an initiative many would have considered, just a few years ago, impossibile, and that unquestionably transformed PlayStation as a brand to the eyes of many gamers.

It wouldn't be appropriate to call all of these releases flops, but I believe it would be fair to conclude most underperformed compared to expectations.
What would you identify as the main culprit behind these games not being nearly as successful as they were on PlayStation platforms? By far the most shared opinion in the other Thread was that those kind of games are overrated by PS fans and therefore not appreaciated by the more objective PC users, which is however something the slightest scrutiny reveals as pure platform warring of the lowest order:

As the games are very obviously appreciated by the audience, despite usually being underwhelming ports. What is the reason then?
Is it the full price? Is it the games being "old"? Is it the amount of piracy due to no DRM? The game requirements not meeting a considerable portion of the audience? An actual bias against PlayStation rooted in some PC gamers even?

On this last point, let's try to make sense of it all without falling into cheap warring.

I have a gaming PC and a PS5 and I bought these normbro games on neither system.

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

It’s really not that complicated. I don’t think Sony ever thought each PC port would achieve millions in copies sold. PS players who love their Sony franchises buy these games on PS platforms. That’s what they’ve been trained to do since the mid-1990s. They don’t wait two years and hold out for a PC port.

Sony’s probably playing the long game at this point and hoping eventually they build a solid relationship with PC players, and hoping that eventually it pays off. Something like that doesn’t happen overnight.

Porting to PC just opens up another revenue stream for them for people who don’t play on console, but might want to buy Sony’s games. I don’t see the downside.

 

[Don Carlo]

AAA game development is super risky

 

[DaGwaphics]

They sell relatively well in comparison to how old they are. Obviously, if they were released in a fresher state they would sell more.

Sony will do what is best for their business when it comes to release schedule. For now I would expect that to be console first, if PC started to really outshine console in terms of consumer dollars spent (PC has been steadily gaining ground for years now) then they might change it up. MS was forced to jump out ahead of the curve anyway because their install base wasn't quite large enough to sustain modern development costs on its own.

 

[Jesb]

All I see are profits from Sony from mostly every release. Looks successful to me.

 

[poppabk]

Why? I'd assume it's because PC gamers don't play many games. The median for games this year was 5 games. That would include the f2p market which is huge for PC.

Where are you getting this number from? Because I guarantee it is wrong.

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

Why? I'd assume it's because PC gamers don't play many games. The median for games this year was 5 games. That would include the f2p market which is huge for PC.

LOL. I guarantee this is wrong.

 

[reinking]

Simple answer, because people are playing them on PS4/5.

 

[DryvBy]

Where are you getting this number from? Because I guarantee it is wrong.

The Steam year in review has the median. Also I was wrong. It's 4. PC gamers on average played 4 games lol.

 

[LazyParrot]

It's a different platform. A lot of Steam users either don't have the hardware to play these games, or they never had an interest in playing them in the first place. Taking that into account, those numbers don't seem all that bad to me.

If Sony wanted bigger numbers on Steam they could just port Bloodborne or Demon's Souls.

 

[SEGAvangelist]

Pretty simple answers. They aren't released day one and the types of games they release don't appeal to a lot of PC gamers. Demon's Souls and Bloodborne would sell a lot, since PC gamers like Souls games, so they should be making more of those games if they want to penetrate the PC space.

 

[MiguelItUp]

It doesn't take much for them to do, and they still get something, so I think they should definitely keep doing it.

Them not selling a tons surely has to do with them being exclusives for a year plus, anyone that REALLY wants the games already owns a PS5 and will buy them ASAP. Some will double dip, sure, but I can't imagine a lot of them do.

Other than that, there's probably a group that doesn't care for PS5/consoles, doesn't own them, and doesn't care for their IPs.

 

[Laieon]

I actually think Mario, Kirby and co wouldn't sell great on PC.

I think Mario Maker would do ridiculous numbers.

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

I actually think Mario, Kirby and co wouldn't sell great on PC. Maybe their first release would but I don't think the PC audience care all that much for cute platform games, Sackboy didn't do great.

Zelda, Smash Bros and Animal Crossing would probably do better, just my personal opinion.

I think Nintendo games would perform incredibly well on other platforms. It would just come at the expense of selling 120+ million consoles per generation, and they’d have to make up the lost revenue via third-party software sales on external platforms. I don’t see it ever happening.

Sackboy’s a good example of a cutesy well made kids game, but the series itself doesn’t have the draw of really any Nintendo IP. At least not any of the major ones. I don’t think Sackboy would do all that great even on a Nintendo platform.

 

[Red5]

By what measure did you reach the conclusion that they are not successful? In fact Sony is ramping up PC releases with Horizon Forbidden West up for release next, which means Sony games on PC are successful enough to justify the ports. These releases already made their development cost on PS release and re-releasing them on PC one or two years down the line is extra money with minimal investment and advertisement to lure in PC gamers to purchase a PS console if they want Sony games on release.

 

[thief183]

As far as I'm concerned... I did buy Gow.... played 5 hours and disinstalled, I hate those cinematic crap, and having paid it full price 2 years later made me jump every other single PlayStation port.

 

[nikolino840]

Who buy the same game twice and after 3+ years old and only digital ?

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

As far as I'm concerned... I did buy Gow.... played 5 hours and disinstalled, I hate those cinematic crap, and having paid it full price 2 years later made me jump every other single PlayStation port.

Why didn’t you just wait for a sale? Unless money spent is not the issue, here. Their games go on sale all the time. I have a list of Steam games and each time one or two of them go on sale I buy them slowly until I’ve picked them all up.

 

[Guilty_AI]

Why do many of those posts seem to imply you can only play first party titles on Consoles?

I'm sure there's just enough selection on the 8552 games you can buy on PSN.

Because:
A) People who buy PS consoles are usually interested in PS lineups, and vice-versa.
B) Console stores have awful discovery, causing the majority of these 8552 to get buried. AND Sony's portfolio naturally get visibility priority on the PS store, hardly a fair fight against 4-men studio making 90s style 2D action JRPG.

On a place like Steam on the other hand, Sony is using 2-4 year old ex-exclusives to compete on even ground against hundreds of other games, with a public that either already played said exclusives or aren't majorly interested in them.

I can't for the love of Javé imagine why you're even considering having these games selling on the tens of millions copies a realistic possibility. The fact they sold on the millions is already a huge win, and Sony is perfectly aware of this as they seem fully interested in keeping the ports coming.

 

[DenchDeckard]

If they put Demons souls, and Bloodborne...I would put money they sell 2 million units in the first three months!

 

[hououinkyouma00]

PC and Console demographics have always been different even before Twitch made pc gaming cool for younger people.

Some things just appeal to different crowds. It just used to be more separated then now.

The problem is that It would seem that most of the new PC players within the last few years are simply playing online games/esports titles. I know that is oversimplifying it but there’s definitely truth to it. I don’t know a single person under 30 that doesn’t just play stuff like COD, Valorant, etc on their PC.

These people either have a PS5 already, or wouldn’t play these games just like the “old school” pc players wouldn’t play the majority of them.

They should just stay course IMO. Release on PS5 and then 1-2 years down the line once the majority of the sales have died down then release on PC and get some extra players/revenue. Releasing day and date would hurt them, and not releasing at all is losing some easy extra money.

Also look at the most plays games on Steam. They don't really overlap.

 

[Darchaos]

I mean, why arent xbox games popular on xbox consoles?

Anyway, i just play my ps games on my ps5 and when they releases on pc im already done with them.

 

[gooner4life_uk]

PC only Gamers have poor taste in games, otherwise they'd own a PS5 already.

 

[Torrent of Pork]

And virtually everybody thinks Take Two are obvious pieces of shit for playing games like this. Of course it's possible Rockstar is too incompetent to make a decent PC port

 

[Alexios]

So that you and all the fanboys who can't claim them as exclusives will keep frothing that they keep coming to PC when Sony, happy with the returns to their investment, keep making them despite your assessment.

 

[poppabk]

The Steam year in review has the median. Also I was wrong. It's 4. PC gamers on average played 4 games lol.

On steam - so doesn't include gamepass, GoG, EGS, Ubsisoft, EA, Battlenet etc. But probably does include tens of millions of accounts that aren't active at all or are Argentinian accounts with exactly one game that is only ever played by a 'friend' in the US or Europe.

 

[Alexios]

On steam - so doesn't include gamepass, GoG, EGS, Ubsisoft, EA, Battlenet etc. But probably does include tens of millions of accounts that aren't active at all or are Argentinian accounts with exactly one game that is only ever played by a 'friend' in the US or Europe.

I mean, what's even the point of such drive by posts, trying to say it's not a successful gaming platform that doesn't grow every year to insane numbers and doesn't generate tons of revenue for big and small companies and hasn't had every publisher run to it (even after leaving thinking they can do better on their own), etc., even those who didn't traditionally do PC games, just because it's also the home of many millions of users that are the type to only play a single MMORPG or F2P or simulation/management/whatever game and stick to it forever and ever hence messing the averages?

PC gaming dead/trash cos random gafer fantrolls froth about their poor Sony games! Everyone who voted no should get a personal apology letter/video call from Kenichiro Yoshida reassuring them they're still loved and important to him every time they release a PC port, lol.

 

[Vick]

All I see are profits from Sony from mostly every release. Looks successful to me.

Fixed. Pretty sure they all brought profit after seeing examples of porting expense:

Business - Game Dev - [LEAK] PlayStation Games PC Port Budgets Revealed! Spider-Man 2 PC Port to Release in 2024

PC Ports budgets (as of Feb 2023): Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart PC Port: $2.5 million FY21: $0.1 million FY22: $0.9 million FY23: $1.6 million Spider-Man Remastered PC Port: $2.3 million FY21: $0.4 million FY22: $1.9 million FY23: $0.0 million. Spider-Man Miles Morales PC Port: $1.5 million...

www.neogaf.com

B) Console stores have awful discovery, causing the majority of these 8552 to get buried.

Complete made-up nonsense, every Sale on PSN is a fucking nightmare for the amount of indie trash and obscure games you have to scroll to get to the decent stuff (which IS present, just buried under endless "alternatives").

PC only Gamers have poor taste in games, otherwise they'd own a PS5 already.

You better raise your shield..

So that you and all the fanboys who can't claim them as exclusives will keep frothing that they keep coming to PC when Sony, happy with the returns to their investment, keep making them despite your assessment.

 

[Famipan]

Some PC gamers are cheap and rather pirate, buy stolen credit card games or just borrow an old PS4 with said game, than buying the game from Steam for a lower price than it costs on PSN.

I would love that they continued deliver it to PC but it's maybe better to keep console exclusivity like Nintendo does, since there will be a time when there's a Steam Deck OLED 2 that probably can play Spiderman in 60fps, without any DualSense-limits nor outrageous PS+ online fees.

 

[ViolentP]

There’s already plenty to play.

 

[MidGenRefresh]

There’s already plenty to play.

This.

 

[twilo99]

I think it’s demographic thing, way more kids/teenagers own a PlayStation than a gaming rig, which is the main Spider Man target audience as far the video game is concerned.

Overall I think Sony seems to target a much younger audience in general.

 

[Guilty_AI]

Complete made-up nonsense, every Sale on PSN is a fucking nightmare for the amount of indie trash and obscure games you have to scroll to get to the decent stuff (which IS present, just buried under endless "alternatives").

PSN didn't even had user reviews until recently (which is paramount for discoverability) and the system they did implement is still terrible. Its game categories tags are horrible and nowhere near sufficient last i checked. The recommendation system is also basically non-existent.

Meanwhile on Steam you can search games while filtering them by tag and year of release, order them by user review, popularity, new trending releases, etc. You can literally go on a site like SteamDB and see the most well user reviewed games on steam per-year. Or alternatively you can go on steam itself, choose a random tag like "simulation" and order by review or sales.

 

[Bry0]

Can OP explain why they aren’t successful. What is your metric for success?

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

Playstation does not know how to transfer its games to PC.

I still wish Gravity rush 1 and 2 were on PC.

 

[Vick]

Meanwhile on Steam you can search games while filtering them by tag and year of release, order them by user review, popularity, new trending releases, etc. You can literally go on a site like SteamDB and see the most well user reviewed games on steam per-year. Or alternatively you can go on steam itself, choose a random tag like "simulation" and order by review or sales.

Yeah I mean, I won't argue about Steam system being better.
Just don't tell me the reason is people having alternatives on PC when there's incredible amounts of them on PS platforms as well.

Can OP explain why they aren’t successful. What is your metric for success?

Sure, already did.

Why aren't PlayStation games successful on PC?

2 reasons in my opinion. 1) PC players are a different base with different tastes. 2) Alot of PC players also own PS5s/PS4s and have already played them by the time they come to PC.

www.neogaf.com