New PlayStation CEOs, Hideaki Nishino and Hermen Hulst, talked about the company’s views on live service games, PC releases, layoffs, and other topics in their first presentation as co-leaders.
In the Sony Game and Network Services Business Segment presentation, Nishino and Hulst shared that “each PlayStation 5 sold generates over $700 in additional spending, which is much higher than the previous generation.”
PlayStation’s PC Strategy Explained
Future PlayStation co-CEO Hermen Hulst recently explained how Sony decides which games to release on PC. In the past, first-party PlayStation games were only available on PlayStation consoles.
However, Sony has started releasing some of these games on PC. This began with Horizon Zero Dawn in 2020, though Death Stranding was technically the first PlayStation exclusive to come to PC a month earlier. Since then, games like Days Gone, 2018’s God of War, and Marvel’s Spider-Man have also been released on PC through platforms like Steam.
In 2024, this trend has continued. Helldivers 2 launched on both PS5 and PC in February. In March, Horizon Forbidden West was released on PC two years after its PS5 debut, and The Last of Us came to PC soon after, following the success of its HBO series.
Most recently, Ghost of Tsushima was ported to PC and received great reviews and high player counts on Steam.
Earlier this week, Hermen Hulst talked about Sony’s strategy for PC ports during a PlayStation business briefing. He explained that Sony has a two-part approach: live-service games like Helldivers 2 are released on PS5 and PC at the same time to attract players on both platforms.
For PlayStation’s story-focused first-party games, which Hulst called the “backbone” of the company, they use PC ports to encourage new players to buy a PS5.
Future PlayStation Head Explains Dual Strategy for PC Games
This explains why recent PlayStation games that come to PC are often older titles, while their sequels remain only on PS5. For example, PC players can try 2018’s God of War and then might want a PS5 to continue the story in God of War Ragnarok.
Similarly, Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered and Spider-Man: Miles Morales came to PC in 2022, one year before Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 was released on PS5. As Hulst said, the goal is to get PC gamers interested in the first part of a series so they will buy a PS5 for the next part.
There are rumors that Sony will announce PC versions of games like Demon’s Souls, God of War Ragnarok, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and The Last of Us Part 2 later this year. While these are just rumors, they correctly predicted the Ghost of Tsushima port.
Insiders now think a God of War Ragnarok port might be revealed soon, possibly during the upcoming PlayStation State of Play livestream.
PlayStation Reveals Immediate PC Release for Live-Service Games, Delayed for Single-Player Games
PlayStation has explained how it releases games on PC. Live-service games will come out on PC and PlayStation 5 at the same time, but big single-player games will not.
One of PlayStation’s CEOs, Hermen Hulst, talked about this during a business presentation. Hulst said the reason for this strategy is to attract more people to the PlayStation platform.
He explained that live-service games will be released on both PC and PS5 at the same time. However, single-player games, which are very important to PlayStation, will come to PC later. This helps introduce new players to PlayStation games and encourages them to buy a PS5 for sequels.
Hulst also mentioned that bringing PlayStation games to other media, like TV shows and movies, helps attract new players. For example, The Last of Us TV show on HBO and the Gran Turismo movie have brought new fans to PlayStation games.
This isn’t surprising since we saw Helldivers 2 launch on both PS5 and PC at the same time earlier this year, while Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut came to PC much later after its PS5 release. But it’s good to hear PlayStation’s plan for the future.
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