Sony's PC strategy doesn't have anything to do with third party games unless their goal is to be a publisher of third party games on PC, but maybe it does.
I meant that their consoles provide indirect profit via 3rd party games sold for them, which is their main business. To also explain why their own console is their main business for them and not PC.
The whole idea that "they make most of their revenue on third party games" could very well be the reason for investing more heavily in PC. It's not good practice to have most of your revenue coming from a pipeline primarily consisting of other company's products.
No. Their business with third parties comes with Sony getting 30% of the revenue generated by the 3rd party games on their digital store (+ extra from the retail ones). The players who come to their console to play them also give them extra profit via services, 1st party games and hardware sales.
In PC they don't own the store/platform, so they don't get the 30% of the 3rd party games sold there. In fact they're the ones who have to pay that fee to the PC store owners. Sony's priority is to sell in their own platform, which is PS and not PC.
Sony would work in the future with 3rd parties if they ever make their own PC store, which as of now isn't the case. Until now they only release a few PC ports of old games from time to time. What they seem to be doing now is that after realizing their first PC ports have been very successful and profitable, they acquiring a dedicated team to port old games to PC so may increase their output, I assume to 4 or 6 games per year (plus from time to time a new Bungie game which would be on PC day one).
Supply constraints that reduce Sony's ability to sell their own games also reduce their ability to sell other company's games. All I'm saying is that it would make good sense for them to shore up the revenue pipeline by expanding their ability to sell more of their own software on PC. Holding out hope that people who already bought your last gen games on PS4 will buy them again for $50 on PC just because God of War was popular isn't a strategy. Presumably that's why they're hiring someone to lead PC strategy.
Anyway, people wanting cross gen to end, Sony selling new releases on PC day 1 is a way to get there without as many cross gen sacrifices. I swear I don't understand why this is blasphemy to the die hards unless their sense of self worth is directly tied to who sells the most consoles.
Even with supply constrains they have been selling consoles and games at a record pace. Being able to ship more consoles they would make more money, but until now they have been making more revenue than any other platform in gaming history, and posting a great profit. Not only new players buy games: they have way over 100M monthly active users on their consoles playing and buying games.
Releasing old games on PC has been a profitable side revenue source, so they will expand there with Bungie games and with Nixxes porting more old games. Regarding day 1 games, I think outside Bungie and maybe some remaster or remake they won't be day one on PC because Sony will want to have (at least temporal) exclusive games on their console as unique selling point. Sony's main priority is to keep people buying consoles and games for them because it's their main business.
It really does depend on the company set-up and stuff like dual class setups does put alot of power in very few people.
I assume all depends on the willingness of stockholders to sell. Independently how a company is, if they all sell enough stocks to someone who offers them a good enough deal/offer, the new owner can rearrange the whole company. As I remember, Tim has 51% of Epic, Tencent 40% and Sony maybe 6-7%. I think it won't happen but let's say Tencent and Tim decide to sell it to Sony and they end getting 97-98%. Sony could do whatever they wanted with it.
At the end of the day companies do whatever their owners want and may morph accordingly. Tim is 52 years old, maybe in a few years decide to retire, changes his mind as happened to ABK, Double Fine, Ninja Theory and many other ones who didn't want to sell and decides to sell the company to some partner like Sony. Let's say Sony continues growing their revenue and profits as they did these years and in a few years end having more money than they do now. Maybe they could buy Tim's part and offer a good deal to Tencent that would have meant a big profit their investment on Epic. If the key stakeholders agree they could make any changes needed to make it happen and integrate the company inside the acquirer's structure before or after the acquisition.
I think it won't happen, and that it's very unlikely, but it's still possible.