Sony plans to implement a more aggressive strategy in terms of bringing their first-party PlayStation games to PC, according to Sony’s latest financial report for Q3 2023. This is in a bid to drive up profits through their games division which on one side is held back by the decreased profitability of hardware sales.
Sony president and PlayStation chairman Hiroki Totoki went over more of this strategy in the Q&A session following the earnings report presentation. He noted, “In the past, we wanted to popularise consoles, and a first-party title’s main purpose was to make the console popular.” He explains that’s no longer the case with cost reduction in the PS5 console cycle continuing to be an issue for Sony. Totoki explains,
“This is true, but there’s a synergy to it, so if you have strong first-party content – not only on our console but also other platforms, like computers – a first-party [game] can be grown with multi-platform, and that can help operating profit to improve, so that’s another one we want to proactively work on.”
This will most likely result in Sony ramping up the cadence of PC releases for their first-party PlayStation titles. Earlier this month, we saw Helldivers 2 having a simultaneous launch on PC and PS5. Notably, Helldivers 2 saw huge success on the PC front with over 1 million sales within a week, exceeding internal expectations. This might prompt more simultaneous PC launches going forward for first-party PlayStation titles.
As for other PlayStation games headed for PC this year, we have Horizon Forbidden West releasing on March 21. Ghost of Tsushima, God of War Ragnarok, and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 are also heavily rumored to launch on PC later this year.
