For a long time, Sony kept certain titles from its “First Party” studios for itself and its PS4 and PS5. These were precisely the “exclusive” titles that PC gamers could only admire from afar. That has changed and will change even more in the future. Because the sales of their actual exclusive titles like Spiderman Remastered, God of War, or The Last of Us Part 1, which were brought to Steam in 2022, look great in the business figures.
What kind of trend is this? Sony increasingly pursued a new strategy in 2022 to bring its “First Party Games” to PC via Steam. These are the games that were originally created exclusively for their PS4 and PS5 consoles, which were considered “system sellers.”
However, as PCGamer writes, this “exclusivity policy” has loosened in recent years, and it has had significant impacts on the business figures of the last year.
In plain language: Sony suddenly made a ton of money with its “actually exclusive” games when they sold them on Steam.
Sony significantly increases revenue in PC category “Others” in 2022
How successful is Sony with this? The sales of “first-party” titles on platforms other than PS4 and PS5 apparently exploded in Q3 and Q4 of the fiscal year 2022.
The sales are listed in the “Others” category, along with sales of peripheral devices, including PlayStation VR:
In the “Others” category, you can see that revenue almost doubled in comparison from 2022 to 2021. They jumped from 187 million yen to 339 million yen.
In Q4 alone, revenues rose from about $380 million to over $1 billion.
These are not just “PS5 games that came to PC” but certainly a substantial portion of it.
Which games is this related to? As PC Gamer points out, Sony released these games for Steam in 2022, among others:
- Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered
- Sackboy: A Big Adventure
- Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
- Returnal
- The Last of Us Part 1 – There was some trouble on Steam here
- (God of War was released in January 2022 but counts for Sony in fiscal year 2021)
Sony wants to bring more of its “catalog” games to PC
What’s next? Sony states that the goal is to
- continue developing new brands
- bring existing games to PC
- and further develop live service games.
For us at MeinMMO, Sony’s “live service” games are particularly interesting. Here we already have a rough overview of what will be coming our way in the next few years:
Sony plans 12 new service games like Destiny and GTA Online for PS5 – We have info on 7
