Then please explain why publishers always favor console releases first, and have PC considered at a later date, or with cheap ports. Not trying to be rude, simply trying to understand.
In this case, this is Sega, and they have become particularly skilled at PC games and development, which makes me wonder even more.
My belief is that they make their main revenue on consoles (for games like this one), not on PC. If I am wrong, then please explain why.
SEGA Europes PC business is entirely different from their console business. They have a lot of very successful PC-exclusives but don't really care about the console side of things as it seems.
We'll see if that changes with their announcements early next year.
To your first point, actually pretty much all western multiplatform games are day-and-date with the console versions and cheap ports are the rare case.
It's the Japanese side that completely ignored PC and only started to set foot there more or less recently (with some baffling decisions and shitty ports to start with).
But more companies that jump onto Steam are shifting to day-and-date releases.
Like Konami with MGSV and Ground Zeroes, Bandai Namco with Dark Souls 2 and 3, God Eater, Tales of Zestiria & Berseria, Xenoverse 2, etc.
NISA started porting their older games to Steam this year and at the same time started releasing their new games day-and-date. Yomawari came out recently and all their announcements for 2017, that aren't from their backlog, are simultaneous releases.
And there are probably more I forgot or don't know about.
Personally I think late ports are dumb. The nebulous 'double dippers' aren't going to make up all the disadvantages they bring with them.
Nozomi has brought up some points, but I'll list my opinion as well:
- Price: No one is going to buy a year old game for 60$. Depending on how much later you release the port, you'll have to set the starting price cheaper accordingly. Needless to say, that's revenue lost.
- Marketing: You'll have to financy new marketing for the new version or stealth release it. Obviously that's not going to be as cost- and visibility-effective as just using the existing console-marketing. And visibiltiy is
important, especially with how many games are releasing on Steam every day. It doesn't matter how good your game is if no one knows it exists on the platform.
- Hype: The console-launch hype is gone, the game is a known quantity. You're going to absolutely lose Day-1 buyes that would have bought the game the moment it came out but no longer care once a late port comes around.
I really don't see many benefits here.
