Current sales figures for Sony’s PC ports of formerly exclusive PS5 titles suggest that demand for these ports on PC is falling. Why is that?
A new analysis from Newzoo provides possible reasons
Newzoo recently published an analysis of PC ports of PS5 titles. It shows that these ports sell worse than games that appear on multiple platforms at the same time. Sony sometimes let several years pass between the PS5 releases and the PC ports.
Manu Rosier, Director of Market Intelligence at Newzoo, says: “Newzoo’s data shows that PlayStation titles that are ported to the PC after the console launch typically achieve a PC share of around 13 percent of total players in the first three months across both release periods. In comparison, for comparable AAA titles that are released simultaneously for PC and console, the PC achieves a market share of almost 44 percent over the same period.”
According to Newzoo, Sony’s strategy of only releasing PC ports well after the PS5 release leads to the ports’ low market share.
It’s not just Sony’s own games that are affected
Manu Rosier added: “It is noteworthy that this pattern does not apply exclusively to Sony’s first-party games. We see little difference between PlayStation first-party titles and third-party PlayStation exclusives. This suggests that the result is primarily driven by the staggered release strategy rather than by the demand for the respective series of games on the PC.”
Bloomberg also recently reported that Sony may no longer want to release PC ports of PS5 games in the future. This decision is said to be based in part on the weak sales of recently released PS5 titles on PC.
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Those: gamesindustry.biz