I last wrote an article covering Sony and their strategy regarding PC games back in November, 2022, called “What Sony Need To Do To Correct Their PC Strategy.” I had hoped that Sony, unlikely as it were, might come across the article or, more likely, might independently come up with my suggestions themselves. However, my patience with their incompetence is wearing thin so I thought it worth sharing my growing frustration with Sony and the PC releases of their games.
Back when I first learned that Sony was going to be releasing their games on PC about three years ago, I was quite excited. About a year later, I even wrote, having learned that Jim Ryan had said that a “whole slate” of games were coming to PC, an article covering Sony games that I’d love to see a PC release. So a good question to ask at this point is how many of the games I listed have come to PC? The answer, sadly, is zero. Sure, I mentioned Ratchet & Clank in my article but I was specifically talking about the classic games rather than the latest entry which was announced recently. That’s not to say that Sony hasn’t released games for PC, they’ve actually released quite a few at this point. In terms of their first-party offerings they’ve released Horizon Zero Dawn, Days Gone, God of War (2018), Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Returnal and The Last of Us Part 1. While all respectable in their own way, none of these games have fulfilled my excitement from when I first heard about Sony’s porting effort.
Having mentioned a couple of those games, why don’t we take a look at the ones that have come out since my last article? Returnal was a game that I had some hope for when it came to how it would perform on PC but Sony poorly marketed it and even failed to tweet about it on the day of release, only tweeting about it over a day later! You’d think that the shoddy marketing would’ve been bad enough but Sony only went and managed to release the worst PC port they’ve ever done in the form of The Last of Us Part 1. To describe this release as a disaster is underselling it. The release had so many problems that I, and many others, consider it to have been impossible for Sony or Naughty Dog to have been unaware of the problem and it has, for the moment at least, shaken confidence in the quality of Sony’s PC ports which, until this release, seemed to be hailed as some of the best in the industry.
I also have to wonder Sony’s strategy for picking the games that they port to PC is. Beyond a statement saying that they would release “the PC version two or three years after the release of the PS version“, there’s been little that I can figure out about which games will see a release or not. A vast catalogue of games can potentially be ported to PC, even with the restriction listed above, but they seem to haphazardly pick games from the second half of the PS4’s lifecycle and the early PS5 lifecycle. Why Demon’s Souls, given the massive popularity of Souls games on PC, has yet to see a PC port completely baffles me and it’s hard to imagine that it wouldn’t be a complete success, assuming of course that the PC port itself is good.
What really pushed me over the edge recently though was how the Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart PC port was announced. Sony had just held what they call a PlayStation Showcase and it was considered to be pretty disappointing by most. I would consider myself among them as I was hoping to see some PC releases that I could actually be excited about. While several PlayStation games were announced for PC, these live-service games didn’t interest me at all and I felt let down. Then, less than a week later, Sony announced the Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart PC port with a blog post. While the content could certainly be seen as exciting, the method felt lazy, even disrespectful. Rather than taking advantage of the large viewership the Showcase managed to achieve, they decided to continue their strange strategy of minimal marketing of their PC releases. Why this port was not announced at the Showcase boggles my mind and it enrages me that Sony is continuing to make mistake after mistake with little to no effort to improve.
Having said all of that, it’s probably time for me to offer some remedies. First and foremost, Sony need to improve their marketing of PC ports, dramatically I would say. If they’re holding an event of some kind whether it be a Showcase or even one of their smaller State of Plays, if a PC port is ready to be announced then it should be announced at one of these events. The amount of attention it’ll receive will be much more than merely releasing a blog post and tweeting about it. Secondly, I think Sony should set up social media dedicated to their PC releases. They recommend following the PlayStation Twitter and Instagram but I think there’s a big problem with this. True, these PC releases are marketed through these but they are so inundated with content specific to consoles that I, as someone who currently only plays on PC, have no desire to follow as I’ll just be bombarded with news that’s unrelated to me. Having dedicated accounts to the PC releases would reassure PC players that the content they’ll get will be related to them and help foster a community of PC fans of PlayStation games. Finally, Sony should reassess their method when it comes to deciding which games are going to be ported and when. Some such as God of War (2018) and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Remastered make perfect sense whereas Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection and Sackboy: A Big Adventure are strange choices that leave me befuddled. Sony has a rich catalogue of games and even a cursory amount of research should be able to indicate which games PC gamers want.
My frustration with Sony and their PC releases is growing more and more and I continue to be baffled by their decisions. I presume that the people they have making these decisions are educated professionals but I constantly get the feeling that, given a chance, I or many other PC gamers would actually be capable of doing a significantly better job than these so-called professionals. Let me know your thoughts on my growing frustration with Sony and their PC releases, whether you agree or disagree with me, how you think Sony could improve their marketing for PC games or their decisions on which games to port and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Thanks for reading and if you wish to seek any of the titles I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs! Also feel free to follow my curator page on Steam “JRPG Reviews” for thoughts and opinions on any JRPGs that I play and my YouTube channel “Victory Achieved Gaming” where I guide my friend through challenging games.