The Novelty of PlayStation's PC Ports Does Appear to Be Dampening

Not so special anymore

by · Push Square

God of War Ragnarok has released to a robust but rather unremarkable 25k concurrent players on Steam. That number is fluctuating and is likely to increase further over the weekend, but it’s a huge decline compared to the original God of War’s much more impressive peak of 73k concurrent players. It shows that the novelty of Sony’s late ports is starting to wear off.

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To be fair, Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut did buck the trend earlier this year, debuting with 77k concurrent players – a record for a PS Studios first-party port, beaten only by Helldivers 2, which launched simultaneously on PC with PS5. Generally, though, Sony’s big sequel ports are selling worse than their predecessors: Horizon Forbidden West registered a peak of 40k concurrent players compared to Horizon Zero Dawn’s high of 56k; Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales managed a peak of just 13k concurrent players compared to Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered’s 66k.

It should be noted that concurrent players don’t give us the full sales picture: they merely tell us how many Steam users have the game open at a specific point in time. But generally a higher number of concurrent players means more sales; earlier this year Black Myth: Wukong posted some mind-blowing concurrent players statistics, which were accompanied by some outstanding sales figures.

We suppose one issue here is the platform holder’s insistence of demanding a PSN login, which is restricting its more recent games from being sold in hundreds of countries. While we understand its decision to mandate a login, it really needs to ensure PSN is readily available in more regions, because it’s needlessly preventing people from purchasing its games as a result.

But it does feel like, in general, the novelty is wearing off for PS Studios on PC, which we suppose is to be expected after the initial wave of releases. Ultimately, Sony will simply be satisfied with reaching a new audience and having a secondary revenue stream, outside of its PS5 and PS4 ecosystems. And we’re sure, over time, with discounts and various other promotions, all of these games will go on to post respectable sales figures

[source steamdb.info]

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About Sammy Barker

As the Editor of Push Square, Sammy has over 15 years of experience analysing the world of PlayStation, from PS3 through PS5 and everything in between. He’s an expert on PS Studios and industry matters, as well as sports games and simulators. He also enjoys RPGs when he has the time to dedicate to them, and is a bit of a gacha whale.

Comments 69

Everyone is still in work, it's 4pm GMT at your comparing it to its predecessor's peak over the weekend.
This article is premature and disappointing in quality

I kinda have to agree. At first I was quite hyped for this but when it came out, not only was I already caught up in games that absolutely mean the world to me like dead rising but then it also hit me I might be falling out of love with modern Sony 1st outings which tbf is entirely on me since taste is subjective 😭😂

When you are selling 10million plus on your main console the numbers are always going to be pretty low 12-24months later.

Not to mention the fact it’s a sequel and they always perform worse in sales/play through etc.

It's the first day, and tomorrow and the day after are the weekend. It is likely that God of War Ragnarok will hit it's actual peak of concurrent players over the weekend.
It is far, far too early to draw any sort of conclusion about how well Ragnarok is doing, especially based on a measure that doesn't include other PC gaming platforms. And that's before we take into account that figuring out sales based on how many people boot up the game at the same time is an odd thing to do.
You'll know if Sony aren't impressed by whether or not this PC port did well from whether or not they consider future PC ports worth the effort.

Article is too early should have waited until after the weekend. Game concurrent is already at 25 k instead of the 24k listed in article.

@SeanOhOgain even though the numbers will rise, many sequels have worse metrics and that's OK. People buy the initial game of the series and may have less fun than they have expected or even completely dislike it. In this case there is no reason for them to buy the second one.

Also it has already been 4 years since PS5 launched back in 2020. Many players have bought PS5 and completed the game there. Even if they have beefy rigs, not so many players tend to replay the game a year or two after.

Let's abandon PC and go back to focusing on the console 👍

Unpopular opinion, but I didn’t think GoW Ragnarok was all that good. I love the original trilogy, and was blown away by GoW 2018, but Ragnarok was a letdown. Story was bland and characters were hit or miss, but the most egregious offender was incredibly poorly written dialogue that felt extremely anachronistic. By the end of the game I half expected Kratos to shout “Boy! Let’s hop in da sled and bounce out this joint!”

At least it looked nice and played well. I just wanted more, especially after GoW 2018. Also glad the tacked on rogue lite mode they shoehorned in was mercifully brief. Once I unlocked those trophies, I dropped that trash immediately and never looked back. I wonder if they’re forcing PC players to slog through that mode for the trophies, or if it was reworked to better cater to trophy hunters with better things to do with their time.

@Gunnerzaurus Well I think they would either have to look at other sources of revenue (live service, micro transactions, paid DLC, ads on the home screen, remasters, mobile games) to keep funding these huge projects, or change their approach to only making smaller games with sometimes a release of said bigger title, which studios don't have the manpower to do.

We're also seeing them just give out licenses of dormant IPs to other companies who also want a multiplatform release by getting a cut from it (Freedom Wars with Bandai, WipeOut with Sega if that ends up being true).

This strategy of "Only on PlayStation" would not be sustainable long term now with how much of these AAA games are being sold, and how much it cost being developed (100+ million dollars).

@Gunnerzaurus That’s a bad idea. Nothing wrong with Somy releasing their stuff on Steam. Besides, the classic games will most likely stay exclusive to PS4 and PS5 so you still have a reason to own those consoles.

It's almost like a port coming out 2.5 years later won't sell as much as the initial launch or something

Crazy stuff

@Gunnerzaurus Yeah, especially when your console sales isn't groundbreaking to begin with. As for your VR platform...forget it.

Yeah, I like to see GOW Ragnarok on Steam. Great, but at same time it rubbers salt. Deluxe edition costs 59,99£, while on PSN is is just 79,99£. Steam takes 30% cut aswell. I am for great value for older games, but why not lower base price on PS5? Oh because they can do what they want. I am just salty, thats all.

@SeanOhOgain yep, but nothing new there, the reporting here always tends towards sensationalism. I’m also not sure why they’re using the word “novelty”. Sony certainly don’t consider their pc strategy a novelty, and as someone that’s bought several Sony studios titles on pc I didn’t do so for their novelty value.

People who’s job is to play and review games are shocked that normal working class people with normal jobs aren’t all sitting there at 4pm playing GOW Ragnarok..

This article is nothing but sensationalist jargon.

Removed - trolling/baiting

There's a reason PC players don't buy consoles.

Like I said 5 years ago, Sony gonna learn the hard way. Just look at Xbox!

75% of my PSN friends list have moved to PC.
PS5 sales failed to meet Sony's targets.
PS+ subs decreasing
PSVR2 a sales flop
Playstation profits decreasing

I realize that most people feel otherwise, but I'm one of those who prefer to see Playstation exclusives remain exclusive. Not console exclusive. Only available on Playstation.

I really don't think that whatever they're making from sales on PC is worth the people leaving playstation and becoming PC only gamers, or PC/Nintendo to enjoy almost all games.

@REALAIS the game go on sale alot buy it when it on sale

There sure are a lot of people who think serialized sequels (as in sequels that continue a singular story) should sell more than the preceding part, for some reason. That doesn't make sense. I would think the ceiling for Ragnarök, all else being equal, is the number of copies sold of the first God of War game.

Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth is another recent example of this silliness. Do people actually believe more people will play Rebirth than those who played Remake? Use your noggins!

@SeanOhOgain unfortunately at the minute there seems to be a lot of hot takes on the site where there is an immediate article put up without much actual thought around the whole situation. And misses so much context.

When they stop and think before the article is written there is usually some very good points in there.

Dear Sony, just release you games day and date on PC and PS5, with the risk that people will prefer playing it on their next Xbox (which is assumed to be some kind of PC). Or skip PC at all.

You current tactic is neither fish nor fowl.

I played Ragnarok. I love Ragnarok! I love the whole series! Now, people who haven't played Ragnarok can play it on PC if they don't own a Playstation. This has affected me in 0 ways. Not sure why releasing a game on another platform makes people angry. Understandably if the other platform is your rival platform. But in this case, it's not.

Also, what's with all the "it diverts resources" BS people spew? Do people really think Sony only has 6 people in the office who work on 1 thing at a time? Like, if they're working on a remaster or a PC port that an exclusive is sitting lonely in the broom closet? Separate teams exist for different projects. This is why, for the 6 years Concord (a new IP. Something people always beg for) was being worked on. We still got a plethora of new games and exclusives.

Is it really a surprise? I won’t play a sequel without having played the first, so I feel like the available pool of potential customers is lower with a sequel than a new IP. Then you get those who bought the first but didn’t like it enough for the second…

@naruball Do you know people who have moved to exclusively playing on PC since Sony started releasing their games there? I don't know any and I disagree that that's a real problem. Console and PC serve very different playstyles and I've found that people who prefer to game on the couch aren't in danger of being enticed to abandon the platform just because some titles are available on their computer now.

It's time to play that Bloodborne card. Would actually be quite funny (but sad) if they finally released the much hyped bloodborne port.. and it didn't sell :/

Maybe that mandatory ps account that dosen't work at all in many countries for a single player game is not really a great idea after all.

Surprising that it's only a little bit higher than FF16 which released on Tuesday. I wonder if both will get a little bump up on the weekend?

Still, this means sales could be anywhere up to a million. I think FF15's peak player count was 29000 when it released and that still sold somewhere between 1 and 2 million Iirc.

@Al3 lots of people unhappy with that in the steam reviews.

@naruball That's a big reason I never bought in to PS5. Sure, I have to wait on some games, but not being a huge modern Playstation Studios fan, I can game on my PC knowing pretty much everything I want on the platform) has released or will release on PC in time.

Nintendo is the only one of the big three fully invested in their own ecosystem and console playerbase, so they're the only company whose consoles I'll bother continuing to purchase.

I'm happy for Sony to pursue this course, since it means less hardware cluttering my home, but I do think, as with Microsoft, it'll increasingly dilute the appeal of their console brand.

@Balaam_ completely agree with you and I also think the other 2 examples he gave are sequels that are worse than the originals..

"While we understand its decision to mandate a login" are you paid by Sony? There is 0 good reason to do this and this is a 100% single player games

@TheTraditional "<30 million" as if 30 million is the number needed to break even. 30 million * 60$ is 1.8b and that's excluding the higher priced editions

@TheTraditional In the current format, I agree.

But I personally have no desire in seeing games cost more than $200-$300million to make

Astro Bot was cheap, made by a small team and made quickly and it's been my favorite game of the generation from Sony

GOWR is easily one of the best games this generation, however most (not all) of the people who wanted to play it have done so on PS5.

All this being on PC does is keep sending the message that the current PS console is not essential - we are not quite in Xbox console marketing strategy realms yet, but we are getting close.

Some kinda Hubris expecting it do amazing or what, it's been out for awhile now, 99% of the people that want to play will have already, and I'm sure there was about 7 people holding out for pc port.
Exclusive use to actually mean something, sadly replaced by exclusive until....

@Gunnerzaurus Agree. There is a space for smaller games and experiences, otherwise we'll end up back here again! Astro proved that.

@Balaam_ Not unpopular, this is the popular opinion of the majority of gamers. Ragnarok failed to achieve the masterpiece level of GoW2018 and was indeed poorly executed. Probably one of the worst letdown of this generation, I think mostly due to pandemic that made difficult to complete the project. That said, I’m not surprised that it will not be a huge success on PC compared to other Sony’s masterpieces.

Its numbers were still better than other PS Studios games. So, at best, you can hypothesize that Ragnarok itself isn't much interesting the PC crowd. Least not when they're busy with Warhammer.

Ghost of Tsushima is the only one I bought on PC.
Looks amazing in 21:9.
The other ones just isn't my cup of tea anymore.
There is so much competition on PC, due to the massive amount of games released on Steam, every day. So ports of old Playstation games, isn't as exciting anymore. Most PC people that enjoy Sony exclusives, usually own a PS console as well. Even though they look even better on PC, most of these games , just don't have much of a replay value.

As long as Sony dosent go day and date with PC then I don't care how well or bad they sell on PC. Or actually selling bad might be a good thing and prevent the possibility of Sony going day and date with PC. Sorry if I seem a little negative but I just find the PC crowd very irritating, even more so since Sony started to release their games on PC. Although to be fair, a lot of the time it is probably just xbox gamers trolling and pretending to be PC master race 🤔 😂

The novelty of platform exclusivity will wear off too as things become more day-and-date

Put games on PC day 1 and see how much those numbers change

The amount of excitement and goodwill with steam players was totally botched by Sony's PSN requirement. Hard to start over once that sour taste is there. I was generally excited to play playstation games on my fancy new pc, but I've refused to purchase anything Sony related. I just think blocking out so many countries/regions/gamers is wrong, and I am voting with my wallet. Although, after the PS5 Pro pricetag I'm more inclined just to leave Sony in the dust

I just hope they start coming out day and date like xbox’s do.

They need to start releasing games on both platforms at the same time, not way down the line.

@TurboTom
As someone who is both a console and PC gamer, both sides are just as annoying.

Wait until all of these games will be on sale for under £20 and than you can count millions of copies.

Sony needs to start enhancing these ports. While I appreciate them and buy them I don't think a PC version that looks visually identical EXCEPT it's able to run at higher resolution and frame rates is enough. Them doing all the ports might be a symptom of basically everything being a PS4 game deep down so I guess time will tell.

I'm not even talking about anything crazy, id just like to see the ability to really crank things higher than the PS5 quality mode level. Like I'm God of Ragnarok, don't get me wrong it's impressive but why not push shadow rendering distance out so I never see transitions from low res shadows? Why not enhancements to things like lighting or reflections etc? They don't even necessarily need to add an RT mode in, they could just offer higher quality versions of what is already there but again it's all the same as PS5 quality mode just being rendered at a final output resolution potentially higher which is different than higher quality levels of the effects themselves.

This game is pretty on PC and runs great. I have it maxed out at 4k DLAA (no frame gen) and I'm usually around 110 fps.

My frame times are absolutely exceptional, I had a 20 min capframex performance capture yesterday that didn't have a single frame time spike, not even a variance beyond 2ms and always well under the time necessary to stay at 110 fps or higher. That level of consistency is.. incredibly rare. So that's why I won't really knock Sony for not doing what I talked about with higher quality levels but that doesn't mean I don't want them because I do and clearly on the right hardware the games could look twice as good and still run at 4k60-90fps DLAA with no issue and higher with DLSS Quality... Let use stretch those legs Sony come on!

Others have already said it, but the PC market is a bit different. It mostly doesn't react to the FOMO aspect that Sony has cultivated on its own platforms, and is generally patient to wait for deep sales. PC doesn't so much do the blockbuster day 1 launch weekend sale thing and relies more on long tail steady sales over time with discounts. Games don't sell all at once as easily (outside a few franchises) but sell much longer term.

The other factor here is of course it's a sequel and despite the PS praise heaped over GoW18, I've always felt that praise has been way overhyped. It's a decent game but it's not this second coming people make it out to be. More of the same outside the PS fanfare machine, isn't going to be as popular on a sequel especially years after the hype wears down. And finally, yeah, the PSN logins removed it from chunks of market it had before.

@Balaam_ That's the popular opinion. Once the dust settled it was viewed as an inferior game to 2018.

The PC strategy is such a shot in the foot. It obviously devalues the brand, even if the negative ramifications will only be felt in the future, and gradually. Moreover, it adds a lot of unnecessary complexity to the already tumultuous game development environment.

Of course I understand the reasons. Margins are getting crushed, and Sony needs to extract more money from each game. But it's a shortsighted mistake.

This "PC gamers" and "console gamers" separation is total bs. These things ebb and flow when you give them enough time.

On the bright side, there are glimmers of Sony realizing it. So I hope they get to eventually revert it. But, why would I want fewer people to enjoy PlayStation games? Because I want better games, and that would come from a healthier industry.

@Steel76
Yeah fair play, both sides can be annoying. I just would prefer games to stay exclusive to the playstation platform. Console wars is tiring enough and now PC is a part of it too since Microsoft and now Sony put games on PC. Maybe I'm just showing my age and don't like change lol

@wildcat_kickz I've seen several people mentioning it here. Though I get that some of them may not have been entirely truthful. But there were many.

@Ralizah yeah. That makes perfect sense.

@Art_Vandelay here we are agreeing for a second time.

@Art_Vandelay Originally I felt the same way. And then I switch to PC lol.

I think the biggest thing to keep in mind though is that it's only old "OG" console gamers that still think "exclusives sell consoles". To a large degree I think that's only ever been true for Nintendo, and the days wen Nintendo and Sega had almost entirely different libraries with very little 3rd party overlap. PS1 similarly had an almost completely different library from the other two. It's not like that anymore. We old gamers have a skewed view of consoles. Nintendo can do it because their IPs are legendary, iconic household brands well beyond the medium. Sony's really aren't. Nobody will ever be a new "Disney/Nintendo" in our lifetime. (Sort of what Totoki was touching on.) Stepping outside the Nintendo/Disney cults, the exclusives generate internet excitement, especially with the older/core base, but when you look at the sales of exclusives, and consider that the exclusives have a lot of overlapped sales to the same customers, the total of people actually buying exclusives is a small portion of the PS install base. I.E. if they never made another exclusive ever again (and they seem to be actively testing that theory now ), their install base.....wouldn't actually drop much. Most of the people buying PS's aren't buying the exclusives at all. They're buying for Fortnite, GTA, NBA, COD, etc. Not GoW, or GoT.

So while we can look and say "oh if they only locked all their games to consoles they'd sell so many more consoles", they can look at their numbers and say "wow 80% of the people buying our consoles don't even buy our games, we need to sell our games elsewhere." The other factor is among whatever percentage of PC gamers they could sell a console to to play GoW, how many of them would buy something OTHER than GoW on that console? The only point of selling the console is selling all the 3rd party games on it. if a PC gamer buys a console to play 4 exclusives, they basically cost them money by taking a subsidized console and only buying a few games. Or barely any money difference vs just selling games on PCs.

The old idea of "exclusives" was basically losing money on some prestige games to get people to commit their whole library to your publishing arm. Once they started spending $200M+ on these games, they're just another 3rd party publisher, the whole losing on exclusives thing doesn't work. Especially when most of their platform customers aren't even interested.

@naruball Now I'm starting to get worried... 😏

@NEStalgia You're focusing on the picture when you should be looking at the film when analyzing this. And the harder part is that most of the movie is yet to be revealed.

You're also conflating many different dimensions to construct your argument, but they don't quite fit together at the end. In my opinion, of course. I do respect your view, but I'm a little short on time to deconstruct it now. So, we'll have to go with "I disagree", sorry.

I'll just reinforce the crux of the matter, then: a platform is different from a publisher because there's this symbol to rally around. I'm referring to the console, or course. If you erode this idol, the whole thing colapses. And great first-party exclusives are the necessary support. It was in 1994, and it continues to be in 2024. There's simply no substitute.

@Art_Vandelay I see what you're saying, but I feel the point is that that "symbol" is the hardware itself today, not the exclusives that go with it. When the majority of customers on the platform aren't interested in those exclusives to begin with that's not part of the symbol to them. The symbol is seeing the PS logo on the boards while watching TV sports, not seeing Kratos.

Where I disagree is the importance of exclusives when you look at the actual sales compared to install base.

While I do get your point about eroding the platform, I think that's a much bigger issue than "exclusives". Not for nerds on forums but for the masses. The problem is they committed generations ago to chasing PC games and PC publishers and PC developers, and the end result is what they have is a PC in a convenient shell. That ship sailed long ago. Their MAIN market right now on console is people looking for a box to play the most popular games on cheap and easy. None of their games are even close to the most popular games, and by definition, no exclusive ever can be. They have a market, sure, but the whole "idol" identity of the console brand as a part of playground politics is ancient and expired.

In a way I'm only kind of stating the obvious. The only company that hasn't realized that yet is Nintendo, and they're deep into their own disney cult complete with theme parks.

@tobsesta99 PC players aren't getting PS3s and PS4s for the original God of War trilogy or any other PlayStation exclusive (that doesn't have a PC port).

That's what emulation is for. 😂

GTA can’t come soon enough for the consoles

@NEStalgia You're trying to make a point that the old console model is dying while failing to provide clear evidence of it. In fact, your last point kind of destroys the whole argument. Nintendo is the irrefutable proof that the old model still works, and works wonderfully. I'm sure Sony and Microsoft would die to be in their shoes. Because even though Nintendo might not be the biggest player, it is definitely the most lucrative one.

This whole narrative you're describing has been pushed down everyone's throat by Microsoft simply because they are on the losing side. Their strategy is to try and pretend their issues are everybody's issues in an attempt to flip the script. I don't fall for it. If anything, I'd guess the next Switch is going to be as successful as the current one, if not more.

Now, if the internet infrastructure ever gets in place, streaming may become a thing. But that could well take another couple of decades.

Maybe it's not the burnout of ps ports.

It's maybe the sequels mentioned are just more of the same and have lost the wow and pull factor the originals had.

I personally felt both Ragnarok and HFW were both excellent sequels but they just lacked the charm of the first titles.

Bear way to put it was that they felt like ubisoft games. Full of padding.

Both were a slog end game.

I kind of hope it does do poorly so I can have some actual exclusives that are... exclusive. People complain about them but without any exclusives, what's the point in owning your hardware? Nintendo, for all its other faults, still understands this basic thing...so why did every other company seemingly forget?

@Art_Vandelay I did cover Nintendo as a unique case. Nintendo isn't the success it is "because exclusives". It's because their exclusives are Maro, Pokemon, etc. Powerhouse iconic brands even if video games stop existing. Mk8 outsold half of Sony's games combined. Is it because it's an exclusive kart racer? No it's because it's Mario Kart. That same trick doesn't work for anyone else.

I'd also argue at this point that being a handheld running console games is even more important than Mario though. Nintendo home console sales were doomed and declining since the 90s. In a way Nintendo DOES exemplify that consoles are dying. Even Nintendo consoles were fading with the exception of Wii that captureed what would become the phone maket before phones happened. It's Nintendo handhelds that sell. Because they're handhelds. And because Mario and Pokemon.

Sony can't play the same game. The fact that they are putting games on PC because they can't make the return needed on their own platform speaks to that

Bottom line is you're not the only one going with "exclusives sell consoles" and even Mike Ybarra was selling that as the necessity for Ms too. But I don't buy it. And neither does Sony. The numbers show in black and white that's simply not what sells their consoles. It used to be. Jim thought it was. But the numbers and upper management show it's not.

@GamingFan4Lyf True true lol. The more options the better.

Maybe PC gamers doesn't want PS games in the first place, especially with all the review bomb and refused to create PSN account.

And if these PC ports doesn't generate enough income for Sony, i think Sony should just stop porting their games for PC and focus the resource to pumped out more 1st party games, the good ones that is.

'We suppose one issue here is the platform holder’s insistence of demanding a PSN login, which is restricting its more recent games from being sold in hundreds of countries. While we understand its decision to mandate a login, it really needs to ensure PSN is readily available in more regions, because it’s needlessly preventing people from purchasing its games as a result'

This is false.The ususal schtick has always been to login through the closest country Sony's server. So if you're in srilanka, use india's server to make PSN account. This region block and 'have to be in that country physically' is entirely imposed upon by Sony and the main reason for the decline of their subsequent games.

@NEStalgia "Mk8 outsold half of Sony's games combined. Is it because it's an exclusive kart racer? No it's because it's Mario Kart. That same trick doesn't work for anyone else."

Very well said. Whenever people bring up Nintendo, they fail to realize that they're in a unique position. Sony can't make God of War 255 and sell as well as Mario games do, irrespective of its quality. Same with Microsoft. Even Assassin's Creed games suffered. CoD is the only exception.

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