Comment on Sony to no longer bring PlayStation narrative single-player games to PC
snooggums@piefed.world 16 hours agoI thought Nintendo was the only one who made money on console sales, so it seems like selling on PC would be more profitable especially with higher sales.
They all make money on console sales. Not a lot of money.
Higher games sales is not a win if it encourages consumers to use a non-Sony device. Sony is thinking long term viability of their platform instead of trying to make half a dozen live service games that nobody wants.
tmyakal@infosec.pub 11 hours ago
The margins on PC are worse. They’re paying extra on porting, on additional marketing, and on customer service, and Steam is taking a huge cut for that privilege. Only releasing on PS5 means the software only needs to be optimized for one unchanging configuration, and any digital sales are run through their own store with less overhead.
Whether that difference in margin is enough to justify console exclusivity, no idea. But selling on PC isn’t as simple as just, “Look, more customers!”
snooggums@piefed.world 11 hours ago
The 30% publishing cut includes offloading networking overhead and is a one time cost. Sony doesn’t need to pay each time there is an update or someone uninstall and reinstalls.
The development process including multiple platforms is an industry standard to the point that if they start with that in mind the even small studios release on multiple platforms. It isn’t as big of a cost as it was before consoles were just specific implementations that start with PC designed components. Porting over a game that was developed 10 years ago as an exclusive is a higher cost, sure, but that isn’t the case for new games.
It is a small up front cost and then free money if it is successful. Helldivers 2 is massively more popular on PC than Playstation, partially because ofbthe larger user base, but by releasing it on steam they are just printing money.
https://en.gamegpu.com/news/igry/sony-zarabotala-v-steam-usd1-5-mlrd-helldivers-2-oboshla-vse-eksklyuzivy