PlayStation had already recently announced that it will be ditching the PC ports of its narrative-driven single-player games moving forward, but now, insider sources have revealed that this decision was made due to the “inconsistent” nature of past releases, and the fact that they didn’t make enough money.
This information came from a post from prolific video game insider Jason Schreier on gaming forum ResetEra, where he states that Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Herman Hulst reportedly told staff during a recent town hall that the decision was made because “they were inconsistent with their PC releases, they didn’t make enough money, and they want to keep their IP aligned to their own platform,” citing that this information was heard by two people who were present at the town hall.
These comments do give a better understanding as to why PlayStation ultimately decided to drop their PC port endeavours, as sad as it may be for all PC gamers out there. The idea of having some of the studio’s best games on multiple platforms might seem beneficial to both fans and the studio itself, but the numbers don’t lie, and the truth of the matter is that some of the biggest PS5 titles released on PC ended up underperforming, such as Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, which only managed to garner an all-time concurrent player peak count of just 28,189 on Steam at the time of writing.
This issue probably boils down to the fact that these games would only be released on PC months or years after their initial release on the PS5, meaning that by that time, the hype surrounding the title had already died down, making them only appealing to gamers who solely own a PC and not an accompanying PS5, which apparently isn’t a common trend. Furthermore, the “inconsistent” nature of releases referred to by Hulst is likely a reference to the fact that many of its PC ports end up launching in a disastrous state, such as the aforementioned Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 or Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part 1, further fueling the title’s underperformance.
Still, it’s a pretty unfortunate turn of events for PC gamers, especially since PlayStation has one of the better single-player narrative-driven game line-ups out there, with many highly-anticipated games set to arrive soon, such as Marvel’s Wolverine, God of War Laufey, and Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. Those looking to play these titles would just have to jump on the PS5 bandwagon.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
