Back in 2020, Sony did what many considered to be unthinkable, when the company announced that Horizon: Zero Dawn, a one-time PlayStation exclusive, would be making its way to PC via a full-fledged release on Steam. Prior to that, PC gamers were stuck trying to stream PlayStation titles via PS Now, a service that no longer exists.
Technically speaking, a few PlayStation titles had appeared on Steam before, though none were as big as Horizon: Zero Dawn.
In the time since then, a plethora of titles have appeared on Steam, including both God of War titles, The Last of Us Part 1 and Part 2, Marvel’s Spider-Man and Days Gone, among others. In other words, if you’re patient, there’s a good chance that within several months to a year, that exclusive will be on PC.
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That said, according to new research from Alinea Analytics, it appears that the novelty of seeing the PlayStation logo on anything but a Sony console is wearing off and sales are dwindling somewhat.
Either People Migrated To The PS5, Or Don’t Have Nearly As Much Interest In PS Titles
In a new edition of the Alinea Insight newsletter, it’s intimated that those PS-exclusive titles don’t nearly have the same amount of cache that they once did. “The audience that was once excited to experience these games for the first time has largely been served,” Rhys Elliot writes, noting that data shows smaller audiences.
For example, the original God of War managed to sell 2.5 million copies in 427 days on Steam. The same can’t be said for Ragnarok, which looks to have sold around 1,000,000 copies. Only 13 percent of those who bought the first game migrated to Ragnarok, per Alinea. Elsewhere, Marvel’s Spider-Man totaled 1.4 million copies in 294 days, but Spider-Man 2 sits somewhere around the 725,000 mark.
The one exception would be Helldivers 2, which was a massive boon on PC, helping make the live-service title a bonafide hit.
Still, it’s not like Sony hasn’t benefited massively from a financial perspective from its PC endeavors. In all, Alinea estimates that Sony has created gross revenues of over $1.5 billion and counting, managing to take home roughly $1.2 billion of that after accounting for Steam’s cut. Even those paltry numbers for Ragnarok and Spider-Man 2 managed to turn in revenues of $45 million and $32 million, respectively.
In other words, the cash is still there, even if the audience might not necessarily be, making the release strategy a viable one for some extra revenue, particularly as first-time sales begin to wean off.
- Brand
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Valve
- Original Release Date
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September 12, 2003
- Original MSRP (USD)
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N/A
- Weight
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N/A
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