Sony recently released sales numbers for their PC releases over the past year. They are also forecasting significant growth for PlayStation PC releases in the current fiscal year and beyond.
The three key PlayStation PC titles are Horizon Zero Dawn, which saw $60 million in revenue, Days Gone ($22.7 million), and God of War ($26.2 million). The fiscal year 2021 saw year-to-year growth of approximately 228%. The target growth for the fiscal year 2022? 375%. Sony is expecting big things from their PC releases.
Last February, Jim Ryan spoke with GQ, highlighting a desire to expand onto the PC market. “There’s an opportunity to expose those great games to a wider audience and recognise the economics of game development, which are not always straightforward,” Ryan states. “The cost of making games goes up with each cycle, as the calibre of the IP has improved. Also, our ease of making it available to non-console owners has grown. So it’s a fairly straightforward decision for us to make.”
A slide during a business briefing obtained by VGC indicates that the goal is for half of Sony releases to be PlayStation PC titles.
“By expanding to PC and mobile, and it must be said… also to live services, we have the opportunity to move from a situation of being present in a very narrow segment of the overall gaming software market, to being present pretty much everywhere,” Ryan said during the meeting.
During that meeting, Ryan mentioned that PS4 releases are planned to be phased out by 2025. If Sony’s goal is to shift from dual PS5/PS4 releases and focus more on PlayStation PC titles, they can expand their market. This is something that Ryan also admits, saying, “PlayStation Studios historically has executed wonderfully in the delivery of a strong portfolio of narrative rich, graphically beautiful single-player games, but it’s certainly the case that we have restricted ourselves to a rather narrow portion of the gaming market.”
One possible PlayStation PC release is Returnal. The game has shown up as a listing on SteamDB. Developer Housemarque, a first-party studio for Sony, was teasing something late last year. Could this be related? We may find out soon enough.
