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Despite strong sales, Days Gone Steam numbers half those of Horizon Zero Dawn

Days Gone’s PC port may be better than Horizon Zero Dawn’s, but the latter had way more players.

Sony’s second big PlayStation exclusive to come to PC hasn’t quite had the same success as the first. Days Gone, which launched on PC a week ago, charted on Steam’s top sellers list repeatedly, but ended up attracting a smaller audience compared to Horizon Zero Dawn.


Days Gone’s highest ever figure for concurrent players on Steam is 27,450, which it achieved over the weekend following a nice gradual ramp-up. This is less than half of Horizon Zero Dawn’s debut last year, which amounted to 56,557 at its peak.

Both games launched across Steam and the Epic Games Store, of course, so while the comparison stands, there’s a chance Days Gone is doing better outside of Steam. Steam reviews for the two games stand at Mostly Positive as of this writing, though Horizon Zero Dawn has significantly more reviews because it’s been available for over nine months.

This is especially surprising because the PC port of Days Gone is better optimised, and more feature-rich compared to Horizon Zero Dawn, which launched in a terrible state and took developer Guerrilla Games the better part of a year to get it into a better state.

With that said, it’s also worth keeping in mind that Days Gone was much worse received critically when it launched on PS4, and that sentiment affected sales there, eventually causing Sony to reportedly kill off plans for a sequel. It would make sense for that negative reception to have also had an effect on the game’s PC sales.

Indeed, we’ll get a clearer picture of PC players’ interest in Sony exclusives as more of those games arrive. I imagine something like a Bloodborne PC port would do much better than both of those games.


I also think Bloodborne would perform better, but then isn't Elden Ring already coming to PC? What PS4 games do you think Sony will bring over to Steam next?
 
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Fake

Member
IDK why those articles make this, but is very simple. Horizon Zero Dawn was one of the very first Sony Studio games to go on PC, so was very hyped and very pre-order.

After the game release broken, people get more cautions about getting other Sony games on PC. Its not so easy to re-earn the costumers trust after releasing a mix bag broken game on PC like HZD in comparison with PS4.

Those sales take into consideration the amount of pre-order?

Let me give you a taste of what twitter warriors can do with those kinds of articles:

- Days Gone is a bad game
- Horizon Zero Dawn maybe is not so broken
- Maybe PC gamers don't want Sony games to go on PC after all
 
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ACESHIGH

Banned
The author of this article does not understand PC gaming at all. Days Gone is a worse critically received game than HZD. And on top of that, with PC gamers is all about long term trust and sales. HZD port was a MASSIVE clusterfuck, the game is still pretty unoptimized and it has a terrible shader cache system (maybe the worst in all gaming)

Days Gone is paying for that with reduced sales upfront. Now that word of mouth is positive it will sell more and PC gamers will trust Sony when the next port is announced.

Besides... UE4 Zombie game that runs like butter. Wait until the modding community starts doing its magic. A first person mod should be a must for this game.
 
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Guilty_AI

Member
Game isn't nearly as hyped as HZD, so its natural it'd have less concurrent players upon release. People were also wary of a bad port.
 

kretos

Banned
Maybe people are waiting for a month where it doesnt contain RE Village, ME Legendary, Biomutant and Days Gone. We owe nothing to Sony, the game will keep selling for years, we arent here to fund your PS5 sequel, get a grip.
giphy.gif
 

CitizenZ

Banned
Probably sold 100,000 copies at $50 bones so far and thats not too bad. Especially when its a few bucks on consoles.
 
PCMR put your money where your mouth is or stop port begging, what you waiting for steam sales at 10$?
To be honest, I just want Bloodborne. I don't care about any of the other games, Sony can keep them exclusive for all I care.

I'd still wait until it's on sale for 20 bucks, though. I already paid full price on PS4 6 years ago.
 
S

SpongebobSquaredance

Unconfirmed Member
Metacritic 89 game vs metacritic 71 game..

and the author thinks it should sell better just because the port itself is a bit better? What a moron.
now it's 84 vs. 78

those scores aren't as important as they used to be anyway. a 77 game won't sell better or worse than an 85 game because of the score.
it's all about marketing, word of mouth, and name recognition. a known streamer playing a game and enjoying it will hype the game much more than an 85 score on metacritic.
 

DForce

NaughtyDog Defense Force

Somewhere between 200k-500k sales in the first week?

They're more than happy to make a extra profit on these PC releases.
 

TexMex

Member
It also probably sold half as many copies on PS4 as Horizon did - did anyone expect it to scale differently on PC? And after years of shitty, unfair coverage in the press?
 

Holammer

Member
Days Gone is doing fine considering, despite a slow start caused by weak reviews for the PS4 version, fears of a bad port & data collection FUD.
The privacy FUD turned the game into a Steam points farm rivaling the 'this game saved my life' copypasta and it lowered the user score from 93 to 91. Even if I don't think they deserve that much shit for it, it's a self-inflicted wound by Sony.
 

Dream-Knife

Banned
A game people didn't want on PS4 sells poorly on PC. Go figure.

Also HZD was broken, so there's probably some lost trust there.

Bloodborne will do much better.
 

Stuart360

Member
The cost of this for Sony is the cost of the port itself. The game is probably well into profit already.
Plus as someone else said, game sales are abit different on PC than console, as PC gamers are not waiting with nothing to play while the next game releases. Games start slower on PC, but have pretty consistent numbers for months on end, as oppose to dropping off a cliff after the first 2 weeks.
 
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yurinka

Member
A PC port of a 71MC game selling almost half a million copies in a week or so (SteamSpy etc need some time to be properly updated) sounds pretty good to me. The PC port released 2 years after launch also got a way better MC and also is getting great user reviews both in MC and Steam.

A port of a GOTY contender game whose PS4 version had way better sales obviously will perform better, but I'd say Jimbo should be very happy with the PC port of Days Gone. I will sell more than one or two million copies on PC, not everybody can say that.

We also have to consider that there have been several big releases recently, and that PC players often wait more to buy the game.

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The cost of this for Sony is the cost of the port itself. The game is probably well into profit already.
The PS4 version was profitable. And the PC port already is profitable, it generated way more money than a port costs.

Are these PC ports even worth it for Sony? From what I remember, Horizon hardly sold gangbusters.
Days Gone sold almost half a million copies on PC in a week or so and Horizon over a million, maybe even over two, until now means these PC ports of old games are very profitable for them.

On top of that, they also help as an introduction for PC gamers to Sony exclusive so they can help to sell some extra PS5 to play their sequels or other exclusives.

Sony must be pretty happy with them so expect more Sony PS4 excluives coming to PC soonish.
 
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ClosBSAS

Member
Are these PC ports even worth it for Sony? From what I remember, Horizon hardly sold gangbusters.
As said before in previous threads, no need to sell millions upfront. Game will reach better numbers than console with time, ala pc gaming. 700k copies at launch is not bad at all for such a shitty port on horizon, days gone is already at 270k sold for sure. With time itll reach the million which is free money for sony. Its not that hard to understand the market.
 
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