Sony’s PC ports of PlayStation games (opens in new tab) are set to make a load more money in the coming year, although the firm’s PC projects are already doing well in terms of earnings.
This became clear from a shareholder briefing where Sony presented a bunch of slides, one of which outlined income from PC ports, showing that they brought in $80 million over the past fiscal year (running up to the end of March), no less.
Those are the proceeds from Horizon: Zero Dawn (opens in new tab), God of War and Days Gone, but there are far greater things to come, Sony predicts. Namely that in the next financial year, the company expects its PC games (opens in new tab) to earn $300 million, almost quadruple the figure from this past year (and not far off a ninefold increase on the $35 million made in 2020).
That’s a huge leap in takings, of course, and it begs the question: what has Sony got in the pipeline to make it so confident that revenue from PC ports (opens in new tab) will surge even further?
Analysis: The live-service show must go on…
There’s only one game which Sony currently has officially announced for PC, and that’s Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection (which should arrive pretty soon) (opens in new tab). Obviously, that’s keenly awaited by many, and can be expected to do well, but it’s only going to be one piece of a larger puzzle when it comes to racking up a few hundred million in PC revenue.
As PC Gamer (opens in new tab), which spotted the briefing (via an IGN (opens in new tab) report), points out, the likelihood is that this income forecast is incorporating the boost Sony is set to get from buying up Bungie, and the large amount of cash hoovered up by Destiny 2.
Furthermore, there’s a graph provided which shows that Sony expects to have three live-service games in the next year, doubtless bringing in large slabs of revenue, one of which is presumably Destiny 2. However, the only game actually mentioned in that projection is MLB The Show 2022, though that isn’t on PC. (Not yet – maybe it could be destined, ahem, to be ported to PC, given that in the past two incarnations MLB has been introduced firstly to the Xbox, then the Nintendo Switch with the 2022 game).
At any rate, that leaves a third live-service title which is a complete unknown, and given the money-spinning potential therein with these kind of games, it could well be pushed to the PC, too, and thereby a bigger audience.
Whatever the case, what PC gamers will really be hoping for is not MLB The Show – well, some might – but the real hot topics when it comes to PC ports are the likes of Bloodborne and the Spiderman games.
There’s a sliver of hope that something along those lines could happen given that as many as up to 20% of Sony’s releases are expected to hit PC in the next year – and more like 30% by the time 2025 rolls around. Keep those fingers crossed, then, although the big money expected to be rolling in is likely from those live-service cash cows, more than anything else…