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[Vick]

The recent leaks painted a pretty underwelming picture for an initiative many would have considered, just a few years ago, impossibile, and that unquestionably transformed PlayStation as a brand to the eyes of many gamers.

It wouldn't be appropriate to call all of these releases flops, but I believe it would be fair to conclude most underperformed compared to expectations.
What would you identify as the main culprit behind these games not being nearly as successful as they were on PlayStation platforms? By far the most shared opinion in the other Thread was that those kind of games are overrated by PS fans and therefore not appreaciated by the more objective PC users, which is however something the slightest scrutiny reveals as pure platform warring of the lowest order:

As the games are very obviously appreciated by the audience, despite usually being underwhelming ports. What is the reason then?
Is it the full price? Is it the games being "old"? Is it the amount of piracy due to no DRM? The game requirements not meeting a considerable portion of the audience? An actual bias against PlayStation rooted in some PC gamers even?

On this last point, let's try to make sense of it all without falling into cheap warring.

 

[Sanepar]

Easy release early and will sell a lot. Full price 2-3 years later is a joke.

 

[Edmund]

Piracy is a factor. I have friends earning $6000-$8000 a month but they'll only spend on Nintendo first party games and gamepass. Everything else they just pirate.

 

[NeverYouMind]

Two reasons:

Reason 1: it is overcharging for a port of an old game.

Reason 2: It is not Bloodborne or other highly successful PC sub-genres similar to souls-likes. (Why would they expect a platformer to do well?)

 

[Schmendrick]

Sony is releasing old games at full price and still rakes in hundreds of millions for a miniscule extra investment.
Absolutely worth it for them.

 

[winjer]

Several of them were very successful. With a big return on investment. Unlike what the non-sense Vick is trying to peddle.
These are old games that require a couple million to port, and can make a profit very easily.

Some failed, because they don't interest PC gamers.
Games like Sackboy and Returnal have little appeal for most PC gamers.
Unhcarted 4 could have had greater success if Sony had released the original trilogy on PC first. Most PC games had never played the first games on the PS3, so they didn't want to go cold into the end of the story.

But in cases like Returnal and Sackboy, because they use UE4, the porting cost is even lower, because UE4 already has all the tools and plugins for PC.
I would not be surprised if the cost of porting these 2 games was under 1 million.

 

[Guilty_AI]

By far the most shared opinion in the other Thread was that those kind of games are overrated by PS fans and therefore not appreaciated by the more objective PC users, which is however something the slightest scrutiny reveals as pure platform warring of the lowest order:

I think you're misunderstanding something about these scores. There are SHITTONS of games with 80-90% range of user reviews, what it means at most is that the game is nice and has no bigger issues, though the lower it closes in on the 80%, the higher the chance it does have some underlying problem with it.

And there'll still be plenty of people who'd buy these 'normie' games on PC. Just don't expect the PC playerbase to worship the ground they walk on like some PS fans do.

I myself considered giving Days Gone another chance since its rather cheap and on GOG, as i found it to be quite 'meh' on the ps4 when it was given with plus. Could change my opinion with better performance+better controls.

Which brings me to the main reason why you shouldn't expect people to be buying and playing these games in droves

Is it the full price? Is it the games being "old"?

Yes and yes. Had they released day and date, they would likely see similar performance to the PS counterparts, maybe slightly below considering other factors.

 

[Mowcno]

Because they are games that have already been out for over 2 years, which means they sell worse than if they were simultaneous releases. Shocking I know.

The strategy means the games are still pushing hardware when they are released and then can be cheaply ported over when they are old for additional profit. Per the insomniac leak Ratchet Rift Apart had an estimated development cost of $81m, the PC port only cost $2.7m. The PC port could be outsold 30:1 by the PS5 version and the PC version would still have the same return on investment %.

 

[S0ULZB0URNE]

Leave it alone.

 

[lh032]

PCMR dont buy games day 1, and most of them play indie games.

Sony should give up the PC market and focus on console.

 

[Majormaxxx]

Simple.

They haven't released last of us 2 yet.

PC players love that shit.

Once it releases, the sales will come flooding in.

 

[Shifty1897]

Piracy is a factor. I have friends earning $6000-$8000 a month but they'll only spend on Nintendo first party games and gamepass. Everything else they just pirate.

That doesnt make any sense, Nintendo is just as easy to pirate these days, if you're willing to steal a Sony first party game, why not a Nintendo first party?

 

[KungFucius]

Why do people thing that selling 2M copies of a game released 18+ months ago on PlayStation at full price is not successful? I don't buy them on PC because I already played them on PS4/5.

I would like to see more recent sales updates. This implies a huge decline but it is biased by having more time for the games on the left. I would suspect that these Sony games sell more when not much is released and people are looking for a new game. This year was stacked with more exciting games so maybe they sold even worse.

 

[OceanGaming]

Spider-Man Remastered PC Port: $2.3 million

Spider-Man PC Sales (Steam Alone): 1.3 M by the end of 2022 -> Between August release and end of 2022

Let's say not all people bought it at 60 dollars and cut 0.3 mil to compensate. 1 mil x 60 dollars is 60 million $

Steam takes %30 cut so 18 million minus. So 48 million. Cut the 2.3 million cost to port and you get 45.7 million.

45 million PROFIT of ONE GAME with ONLY ONE STORE and ONLY 2022 SALES

Now add God of War, Horizon, Days Gone etc. We are are looking at 400Mil or more easily.

You'd be blind to to think a public corporation like Sony will say no to free money like that.

 

[NeverYouMind]

PCMR dont buy games day 1, and most of them play indie games.

Sony should give up the PC market and focus on console.

I do not consider myself part of that category despite gaming on PC as I do not invest in the newest high-end hardware, but I did purchase Resident Evil 4 Remake and Lies of P day zero at full price with $10 worth of extras.

They haven't released last of us 2 yet.

Not gonna happen. Keep that mind-virus infected software quarantined.

 

[Perrott]

God of War goes for sale for $9.99 on consoles but only for $24.99 on Steam.

That's why, greedy fucks.

 

[Gaiff]

Not successful according to who? Gafers?

Horizon, GOW, Spider-Man, Miles Morales, and Days Gone did relatively well. This says Spider-Man sold 1.3M in 6 months so this must be for Feb 2023 (explaining Returnal and TLOU's absence). Uncharted 4 has 4-5 months worth of data and it's the fourth entry in the series. It'll do over 1M when it's all said and done. The one flop is Sackboy but then again, it didn't do that well on Playstation either.

Those are old 2+ year old games that exhausted their sales on Playstation and went on to earn hundreds of millions in revenues all the while costing in the low millions to port.

Those sales are far from bad unless Sony tells us so. The narrative that they're flops is mostly peddled by butthurt fanboys who want them to fail because they're hurt that "their" games are playable on PC so they wish them to financially fail for Sony to stop porting them. So much for them liking Sony when they pray for them to crash and burn with their PC initiative.

 

[The Fuzz damn you!]

They are as successful as they need to be, and Sony’s teams are building PC dev experience.

They’re not *more* successful because these are games designed for the living room and a controller. They are, by and large, cinematic third person adventures. Given a choice, most people will watch movies on their TVs not their PCs. PlayStation games just play better there too.

Edit— also, of course, they are in large part intended to be demos to draw people into PlayStation. Enjoyed Horizon Zero Dawnon PC? Great! You’ll need a PlayStation if you want to play Horizon Forbidden West within three years of launch.

 

[Aion002]

Because those that really wants to play the games end up buying a Playstation, rather than waiting the pc release.

Then the pc sales are basically the people that had some interest and are fine with waiting.

On short term for Sony this is good, it pushes people to buy the console if they really can't wait and they might even double dip on the pc release.

On the long term, it's dumb as fuck, because as generations goes people might just wait the pc version and Playstation might lose appeal.

 

[RoboFu]

Where’s the choice for …

- anyone who makes a poll not answering the title question should be perma-banned.

 

[daninthemix]

All the reasons have already been stated:

• The games are released late and with no marketing. These games are all heavily hype-driven. Robbed of any hype, their sales are limited.
• Add to the above the premium price tag and sales are further impacted.
• Some of them have technical issues, leading to poor initial Steam reviews, which can damage sales significantly.
• These games just don't matter as much outside the Sony ecosystem. Do you give a shit about Uncharted? If so, you probably already own a PlayStation.
• Some armchair fanboy's opinion of "successful" probably has nothing in common with Sony's opinion of "successful", hence why the ports continue, to the bemusement and frustration of fanboys.

 

[zapper]

even if they arrive late, these numbers are only a damage to these IPs imo, devaluing their commercial value.
they should give up these half-baked strategies and follow Nintendo, the smartest of the 3 phs

 

[Mister Wolf]

Because they don't give us the games we actually want. Can any of you justify Returnal, Sackboy, or Ratchet & Clank getting a PC port before Demon's Souls.

 

[Pakoe]

Because those are some boring ass games
We got enough to play already

 

[tommycronin]

Because they're not good on PS5 either.

 

[StealthGoblin]

I don't think they've underperformed. The cost to port (especially by a team on the payroll) is minimal and they more than cover their costs. The second wind also helps promote the IP more and down the line you just know that there'll be a version of PS+ premium that encompasses PC.

 

[adamosmaki]

How the f**k a port of a game that probably cost next to nothing to port selling 2,3 millions years after it was released on playstation failure? Also these sales are until February 2023 so something like spiderman probably sold quite a bit more till now ( actually it sold 1.5 million till march 2023 and PlayStation expects its PC revenue to grow at a 133% CAGR and reach $450 million in FY23 ending March 31, 2024

 

[winjer]

Spider-Man Remastered PC Port: $2.3 million

Spider-Man PC Sales (Steam Alone): 1.3 M by the end of 2022 -> Between August release and end of 2022

Let's say not all people bought it at 60 dollars and cut 0.3 mil to compensate. 1 mil x 60 dollars is 60 million $

Steam takes %30 cut so 18 million minus. So 48 million. Cut the 2.3 million cost to port and you get 45.7 million.

45 million PROFIT of ONE GAME with ONLY ONE STORE and ONLY 2022 SALES

Now add God of War, Horizon, Days Gone etc. We are are looking at 400Mil or more easily.

You'd be blind to to think a public corporation like Sony will say no to free money like that.

Just one correction, Steam lowers it's percentage cut, the more a game sells.

• Sales less than $10 million: Steam takes a 30% cut.
• Sales between $10 million and $50 million: Steam takes a 25% cut.
• Sales more than $50 million: Steam takes a 20% cut.

So a game like Spider-man probably had a 20% cut. Meaning Sony made even more money.

 

[SHA]

There are different tastes out in the wild, you know.

 

[64bitmodels]

ome armchair fanboy's opinion of "successful" probably has nothing in common with Sony's opinion of "successful", hence why the ports continue, to the bemusement and frustration of fanboys.

the biggest reason. for 2-5 million a pop these are incredibly succesful considering those unit sales. You guys do realize that graph was in 2022 right? it's late 2023.

 

[Banjo64]

Their appeal is not broad in scope and they are targeting the causal market (who prefer to game on consoles and who have already bought a PS because they like these games).

 

[rsouzadk]

Old games with full prices. As simple as that.

 

[KungFucius]

That doesnt make any sense, Nintendo is just as easy to pirate these days, if you're willing to steal a Sony first party game, why not a Nintendo first party?

Please stop calling piracy stealing. It is pirating. Stealing is literally taking something from someone and having them actually lose that something, not some abstract downloading a copy deprives them of potential revenue so they are equal BS. The term pirating exists and has a very specific meaning, no need to convolute it with theft when that term has 100s or years of meaning attached to it and includes, direct, obviously measurable damage to the victim. Can you say for a fact that any random pirate would have paid for the game if they couldn't download it? Of course not. The value taken is abstract. Can you identify the value taken from a store if someone shoplifts? Yes. in all cases this is trivial. That difference matters. The other side of it is bizarre. When someone is caught stealing they typically get a fine and have to pay for the item. The fine is not trivial, but it is significant. When people get caught pirating the fines are often financially ruinous to that person. They tend to be treated as though they stole a truckload of items because companies pushed to make an example out of these people and don't care if they destroy one of millions of people in some sick attempt to deter a behavior that they cannot fully estimate the cost of.

I have no doubt that piracy is impacting the sales here. But it is not 1:1 or anything close to that. It is probably high though because most games are not pirated these days due to Denuvo? Not sure why Sony doesn't put DRM in the games? Even MS is doing that for their gamepass games. Maybe their ports are so shitty they don't want to risk performance hits. Maybe they are trying to win goodwill with PC gamers. Who knows. All I know is if they put their games out on PC sooner, I would stop buying their systems and get the games on PC. A Sony store that I can put on multiple PCs and play coop games at home on 2 TVs with my kids would be awesome.

 

[Heisenberg007]

My take on this is:

1. Considering the time delay and the cost of ports, PlayStation games on PC are successful.
2. Despite that, single-player games should not go to PC. Multiplayer games should release day one.

 

[R3TRODYCE]

Old games that run like shit while still being full priced.

 

[TxKnight7]

Why aren't PlayStation games successful on PC?​

Someone said that Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart is successful on PS5 it sold 2.7 million

but somehow Horizon zero dawn is not successful on PC 3.3 million?

 

[Edmund]

That doesnt make any sense, Nintendo is just as easy to pirate these days, if you're willing to steal a Sony first party game, why not a Nintendo first party?

Lots of them are Nintendo fans, Phil Spencer worshippers and Sony haters. It's just really weird.

 

[Tomi]

Spider-Man Remastered PC Port: $2.3 million

Spider-Man PC Sales (Steam Alone): 1.3 M by the end of 2022 -> Between August release and end of 2022

Let's say not all people bought it at 60 dollars and cut 0.3 mil to compensate. 1 mil x 60 dollars is 60 million $

Steam takes %30 cut so 18 million minus. So 48 million. Cut the 2.3 million cost to port and you get 45.7 million.

45 million PROFIT of ONE GAME with ONLY ONE STORE and ONLY 2022 SALES

Now add God of War, Horizon, Days Gone etc. We are are looking at 400Mil or more easily.

You'd be blind to to think a public corporation like Sony will say no to free money like that.

This is total true

Every release on pc so far is probably a profit for Sony, so why you think its not successful

 

[winjer]

The premise of this thread is completely wrong. Because these games are very successful at generating extra revenue, for a small investment.

 

[Midn1ght]

Late release
Overpriced (Sackboy still at €60,00 come on)
Broken ports (TLOU probably missed ton of sales because of it)
30 years worth of games available
etc...

Success in this case is relative, Sackboy, Returnal and Ratchet didn't perform well on PC but it's not like they broke the bank on console either.
The Legacy of thieves collection sold 500k on consoles isn't it? Why should we expect it to sell million on PC when the original trilogy isn't even there.

Overall I think it's doing fine for games that are 2 years old or more and exhausted their selling power on console. Games cost is ridiculous these days, if they can make a few extra hundred million per gen without hurting their core business and sell more consoles to impatient PC gamer who enjoyed their titles then it's all good.

 

[Vick]

With a big return on investment. Unlike what the non-sense Vick is trying to peddle.

I don't think they've underperformed. The cost to port (especially by a team on the payroll) is minimal

Some of them maybe, Naughty Dog in particular however have been a complete shitshow on PC and the efforts to port their Engine on PC has been all but minimal. It effectly impacted their future approach on game development as a whole as well.

Flagship First-Party Naughty Dog Will Develop for PS5 and PC Moving Forwards

One of these things is not like the other

www.pushsquare.com

And for what, less than 500k copies and unlimited amount of memes/mocking all over the web?

I think you're misunderstanding something about these scores. There are SHITTONS of games with 80-90% range of user reviews, what it means at most is that the game is nice and has no bigger issues, though the lower the it closes in on the 80%, the higher the chance it does have some underlying problem with it.

And there'll still be plenty of people who'd buy these 'normie' games on PC. Just don't expect the PC playerbase to worship the ground they walk on like some PS fans do.

This doesn't exactly seem to be the case though:

Spoiler

Are these PC ports by the competition orders of magnitude worse than the PS ones? Wasn't Gears 5 considered by DF as "One Of The All-Time Greatest PC Ports"?

According to Steam, when it comes to third person single player games, your statement "SHITTONS of games with 80-90% range of user reviews" doesn't really seem accurate. Looks like a really small percentage.

Why the hell do you think the gaming world is composed solely of MS or Sony games?

Those +90% scores don't seem so impressive now do they? Bet you haven't even heard about half of those, which is sort of the point.

Damn, 12 games out of thousands, some of them GOTY winners and most praised all over the Board for years.. you really proved your point.

Now try with more similar games, which according to some warriors in here would be "UbiSoft titles" and "Walking Simulators"..

 

[SantaC]

because sony only release 2nd rate games for PC, and not playing to the audience. Like Bloodborne and Demons soul.

 

[owandeseis]

Sony spends ridiculous amounts of money on marketing on each of their AAA releases on console, their marketing cost for PC games is writing a tweet.

Horizon and GoW sold 6m copies combined, costing probably about 4-5 million dollars combined, and releasing 40-50 months after the console release, that's pretty good.

PC games got bigger legs than console ones, which doesn't mean they can't sell well on release, BG3 or Cyberpunk reached 10m sales on PC very quickly, but these had some marketing-hype behind.

 

[Durandle]

Polished/Good games on consoles sell better because there is less choice, so you end up buying the the "good" games when they come up. The PC market is so SO much wider and varied, with many more cheaper but equally excellent games. Simply put, there's more competition and, perhaps, expectations are higher.

 

[winjer]

Some of them maybe, Naughty Dog in particular however have been a complete shitshow on PC and the efforts to port their Engine on PC has been all but minimal. It effectly impacted their future approach on game development as a whole as well.

Yes, several PS ports had technical issues, but they have been improved a lot.

But the point is we are making is that you are wrong saying these ports are not a success. When in reality they are a huge success.
For example, Spider-man. It took an investment of 2.3 million US$, to get a profit of over 60 million. This is a 26 times return on investment.
In no industry, anywhere on the planet, would this be a failure.

Your premise that Playstation ports on PC are not successful is very wrong.

And even games like Returnal and Sackboy were probably profitable, because porting a game to PC, when it uses UE4 is a lot easier and cheaper.

 

[SCB3]

Easy

1. They're well out of date by the time they release
2. Overpriced when they do come out
3. Often have a bunch of tech issues, Horizon and Last of Us Part 1 being the worst
4. If you liked any of these IP's you'd probably already have or will buy a PS4/5 to play them

 

[RoboFu]

because sony only release 2nd rate games for PC, and not playing to the audience. Like Bloodborne and Demons soul.

Pretty much this. Games that no one wants to double dip / wait years for.

Day one releases would give them more sales IMO from pc gamers without PlayStations by riding launch hype. Other wise something else comes along later that’s newer and shinier for that dollar.

 

[Lumpyoatmeal]

The recent leaks painted a pretty underwelming picture for an initiative many would have considered, just a few years ago, impossibile, and that unquestionably transformed PlayStation as a brand to the eyes of many gamers.

It wouldn't be appropriate to call all of these releases flops, but I believe it would be fair to conclude most underperformed compared to expectations.
What would you identify as the main culprit behind these games not being nearly as successful as they were on PlayStation platforms? By far the most shared opinion in the other Thread was that those kind of games are overrated by PS fans and therefore not appreaciated by the more objective PC users, which is however something the slightest scrutiny reveals as pure platform warring of the lowest order:

As the games are very obviously appreciated by the audience, despite usually being underwhelming ports. What is the reason then?
Is it the full price? Is it the games being "old"? Is it the amount of piracy due to no DRM? The game requirements not meeting a considerable portion of the audience? An actual bias against PlayStation rooted in some PC gamers even?

On this last point, let's try to make sense of it all without falling into cheap warring.

As a PC Gamer most of my friends including myself finds these titles to be mediocre. I would personally love to have MGS4 ported though.

If the developers made their titles with PC included as an actual concept that would be amazing especially for singleplayer games, that would personally make me excited, Vick.

 

[Guilty_AI]

This doesn't exactly seem to be the case though:

Spoiler

Are these PC ports by the competition orders of magnitude worse than the PS ones? Wasn't Gears 5 considered by DF as "One Of The All-Time Greatest PC Ports"?

Why the hell do you think the gaming world is composed solely of MS or Sony games?

Those +90% scores don't seem so impressive now do they? Bet you haven't even heard about half of those, which is sort of the point.

 

[Topher]

Low investment -> high return. That's successful in any business.

because sony only release 2nd rate games for PC, and not playing to the audience. Like Bloodborne and Demons soul.

Not second rate on PlayStation, but yeah, different audience on PC. Bloodborne and Demons Souls will do extremely well on PC.