It’s been a little over two years since Sony released Horizon Zero Dawn on PC and we have since seen a slow trickle of first-party PlayStation games make their way over. These PC ports have proven to be generally successful and I’ve had high hopes for this PC push from PlayStation. However, we’ve begun to see some fumbling from Sony recently and I thought it might be interesting to examine the cause of these problems and what I think Sony need to do in order to correct their PC strategy.
Let’s start by taking a look at the two recent PC releases from Sony that have demonstrated the flaws in their strategy. First, the Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection was released last month on the 19th over a year after it was initially announced. While the game didn’t perform poorly, it did prove to be, up to that point, the weakest PlayStation PC release since Sony began their push. The lowest performing title before Uncharted was Days Gone with a peak concurrent player count of 27,450 but Uncharted ended up getting a mere 10,851 peak concurrent player count.
Now, the question is why was this the case? The most obvious problem is that the Legacy of Thieves Collection only contains Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and its spin-off Uncharted: The Lost Legacy while the first three games remain unavailable on PC. Now it isn’t always the case that all previous games of a franchise must be on PC in order for the game in question to be successful but considering how narrative driven the Uncharted games are, it’s clear that releasing what is the final chapter of the story first on PC is an odd decision. I myself am actually somewhat interested in trying the Uncharted franchise someday but I, like many other people I assume, don’t want to start at the end. Naughty Dog, the developers of Uncharted, also gave a baffling reason as to their decision, that being “We felt that, while Nathan Drake’s first three adventures from the PlayStation 3 console still stand the test of time narratively, they would require a major overhaul visually to stand-up to modern PC releases and the expectations players may have.” While it’s true that the original three Uncharted games don’t look as good as Uncharted 4 and Lost Legacy, they certainly don’t look bad and I fear that this is a sign of PlayStation’s bizarre obsession with graphical fidelity which I believe will prove problematic as it will limit the games that Sony want to port to PC from their back catalogue.
Now it’s interesting to note that, since then, another PC port from Sony has proven to be even less successful than the Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection to the point where it may be fair to call it a flop. Sackboy: A Big Adventure was released on PC on October 27th and managed to muster up a low 610 peak concurrent player count on Steam. This indicates that the game is selling poorly but, again, I must ask why. With regards to Sackboy, I can think of several reasons to explain this. Since the game was announced for PC, PlayStation has done surprisingly little to market it and it certainly doesn’t help that Sackboy, itself a spin-off of the LittleBigPlanet games, doesn’t have the attention drawing power of games like God of War or Spider-Man. I would also point to the price tag as another issue, costing €59.99 which stands in sharp contrast to the usual PlayStation PC game price of €49.99, Spider-Man excluded. I remember thinking that Sackboy would need to be priced competitively in order to stand a chance at being successful but it defied my expectation and was priced less competitively! I admit that I have no idea what Sony’s expectations for Sackboy on PC were, particularly since we still don’t have any sales figures for its release on console, but it’s hard to imagine that they’d be happy with its performance so far.
So having said all this, it’s time that I speak about what I think Sony needs to do to correct their current PC strategy. First, I think Sony needs to realise that graphics are not the be-all and end-all when it comes to PC games. While resolution options, framerate options and being able to reconfigure your controls are still super important and should be present in every PC port, I don’t think older games need full remakes to improve their graphics before they’re released on PC. Many of the PlayStation games that I’d be excited to see on PC are older titles with many of them coming from the PS1 and PS2 days and I fear that Sony’s graphical obsession will prevent many of these classics from getting PC ports. With this in mind, Sony should start paying greater attention to what first-party games PC players actually want (Bloodborne…cough…cough) while also looking to price things that are gonna be harder sells, like Sackboy, more competitively, which I’m sure Sony has absolutely no intention of doing. My only other piece of advice to them is to not do something as ludicrous as releasing the final part of a game series known for its emphasis on narrative on PC without releasing the prior games for asinine reasons such as the graphics looking a little dated.
As a PC gamer, I want to see Sony succeed with their PC ports but some baffling decisions on their part as well as their choice of games to port to PC is beginning to test my patience. Let me know your thoughts on the need for Sony to correct their PC strategy, whether you agree with my reasoning or not, any other ways you think Sony could improve when it comes to releasing their games on PC 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.