Highlights
- PlayStation's recent PC ports have had mixed results, with some games selling well and others flopping. Games like Horizon Zero Dawn and God of War have performed well on PC, while titles like Uncharted and The Last of Us Part 1 have struggled.
- The success of these ports is influenced by factors such as launch issues and replayability.
- Further, with long gaps between the console release and the PC port, fans of each franchise have likely already played the games on a PlayStation long before their arrival on PC.
Over the last decade, PlayStation has really pushed to create a library of popular first-party IPs, and it's succeeded far more than it's failed. Though disappointments like Days Gone exist, they're definitely the outliers, with God of War, The Last of Us, Marvel's Spider-Man, Horizon, and a good few more all proving that PlayStation's resources weren't squandered. And with these IPs now under its belt, PlayStation can use them in a variety of ways moving forward, with PC ports being the company's first step.
After Xbox began porting its first-party games over to PC with Xbox Game Pass in 2019, PlayStation decided to follow suit, albeit in its own unique way. To start things off, PlayStation released Journey and Flower back in 2020, and after the PC community decided to bite, PlayStation dropped its first major AAA first-party PC port, Horizon Zero Dawn. Over the last three years, PlayStation has continued to port its recent first-party games to PC, but to pretty mixed results. And while the success of these PlayStation PC ports may seem random, there are a few clear factors that dictate how well these titles have performed.
Why Some PlayStation Games Aren't a Success on PC
For years, PC players have begged PlayStation to put its first-party games on PC, and when that started happening in 2020, fans were ecstatic. The first few PlayStation PC ports were incredibly exciting releases, and their sales reflect that. In about a year and a half, Horizon Zero Dawn's PC port sold 2,398,000 copies, and by March 2022, it had sold 2.4 million. This excitement carried through to God of War, which hit PC in January 2022, and is believed to have sold around 3 million units. Both Marvel's Spider-Man games have also done incredibly well, moving around 1.5 million units since August last year.
But not every PlayStation PC port has been a success story, and for the last year or so, it's only continued to go downhill. Back in October 2022, Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection released on PC. Though exact numbers aren't known, it has been confirmed that Uncharted was PlayStation's weakest PC release at that point, though that's probably been outdone since, with Uncharted's PC release marking a steep decline for these ports. Sackboy: A Big Adventure also flopped when ported over to PC, having the lowest sales of the AAA ports by a wide margin.
The Last of Us Part 1, one of the most critically-acclaimed games of all time, was a spectacular failure on PC. Launching back in March of this year, when Last of Us fever was at an all-time high thanks to the show, The Last of Us Part 1 only managed to sell around 360,000 units in its first few months. For a AAA first-party game, and one with as much reverence as The Last of Us, these numbers aren't good. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is the latest to experience this troubled trend, with it apparently selling even worse than The Last of Us did.
One of the biggest reasons behind the failure of some of these recent PlayStation PC ports is that they're pretty broken on launch. The Last of Us Part 1 was the biggest offender here, suffering extreme game-breaking bugs and glitches that are still present in the game today, even after multiple patches. Though it isn't quite as buggy, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is also struggling with exceptionally long loading times, with an SSD essentially being a requirement.
Another big reason behind the recent PlayStation PC port failures is a lack of replayability. For the most part, these PlayStation games are years old at this point, and for those truly invested in the IP, they'll have already likely played the games when they first released, and have owned them on console for the years since. While games like Marvel's Spider-Man have a great deal of replayability, shorter PlayStation titles like Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart don't, and that can massively impact which fans decide to pick up the same game on a different platform, especially when it costs full retail price.