Are Playstation Games ports to PC streaming successful?

14 Oct Are Playstation Games ports to PC streaming successful?

PlayStation 5 has been a financial success for Sony, generating $10.6 billion and accumulating 118 million monthly active users. However, Sony has yet to fully capture PC gamers. In May, it announced that it would release more exclusive PS5 titles on Steam and the Epic Games Store, with live service games available on multiple platforms from day one.

This article, based on data from Stream Hatchet, analyzes how PS5 games adapted to PC have performed, focusing on God of War Ragnarök and Final Fantasy XVI. An analysis of ten adaptations shows that the audience during the launch week of a PC port is usually less than 10% of the original PS audience. Titles like Horizon Forbidden West (5.3%) and Marvel’s Spider-Man (4.2%) reflect this.

The port of God of War Ragnarök, released on September 19, generated only 905,000 hours viewed compared to 30.4 million on PS5, just 3%. Negative feedback arose due to the requirement of creating a PSN account and because the game had already been played by many, which reduced the number of new players.

Regarding Final Fantasy XVI, its PC port achieved 5.4% of the original audience. Although it had potential, the short time between releases affected its reception, with 17,000 concurrent players during the first hours.

The viability of PC ports depends on whether the development cost justifies the increase in players and whether these players will become future PlayStation users. With more ports on the way, like The Last of Us Part II and Final Fantasy XII Rebirth, time will tell if this strategy is effective.