Known journliast Jason Schrier believes single.player PlayStation exclusives may not release on PC in the future, wondering about the success of these releases
The answer could actually be much simpler. Last I checked horizon zero Dawn sold over 3 million units on steam which is nowhere near what they sold on PlayStation systems.
I wonder what the cost of porting a game that size is these days, because a few million copies may not be enough to float the endeavor.
Horizon was like years after release, and even if it’s a first time launch on another platform just by virtue of people having already had to wait the same hype isn’t going to be there to buy it.
But then when a game launched at the same time such as Helldivers 2, PC outsold the PS5.
According to analyst firm Alinea Analytics, Helldivers 2 has sold 12 million copies on Steam alone, while PlayStation 5 sales are estimated at 5 million units.
You forgot to mention that it was ported years after its initial launch. Porting is way cheaper than developing especially nowadays where we have basically the same architecture in a dedicated DRM machine (console) than in a Personal Computer, it’s basically a x86 APU running a proprietary fork of BSD (and Windows for xBox). It’s not like back in the days where each machine (pc or console) had there own architectures that could radically differ. Also Game Engines have feature backs-in, Vulkan is universal (and better than DirectX (Microsoft) or OpenGL). Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised that selling 3M copies on Steam alone at a 50% discount would still be a profitable porting.
That’s great for you but this is a tried and true strategy. People buy dedicated DRM machines to get access to exclusive games all the time.
The answer could actually be much simpler. Last I checked horizon zero Dawn sold over 3 million units on steam which is nowhere near what they sold on PlayStation systems.
I wonder what the cost of porting a game that size is these days, because a few million copies may not be enough to float the endeavor.
Horizon was like years after release, and even if it’s a first time launch on another platform just by virtue of people having already had to wait the same hype isn’t going to be there to buy it.
But then when a game launched at the same time such as Helldivers 2, PC outsold the PS5.
https://tech4gamers.com/helldivers-2-sold-more-on-pc-than-ps5/
You forgot to mention that it was ported years after its initial launch. Porting is way cheaper than developing especially nowadays where we have basically the same architecture in a dedicated DRM machine (console) than in a Personal Computer, it’s basically a x86 APU running a proprietary fork of BSD (and Windows for xBox). It’s not like back in the days where each machine (pc or console) had there own architectures that could radically differ. Also Game Engines have feature backs-in, Vulkan is universal (and better than DirectX (Microsoft) or OpenGL). Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised that selling 3M copies on Steam alone at a 50% discount would still be a profitable porting.
Porting and developing are not my jobs DYOR.
What are you smoking? It sold like 10 times as many copies on console.