By Shawn Knight
The year was 1998. It was Christmas time and I had just received my very first computer, an AMD K6-2 running at 333 MHz. Little did I know, from that day forward, my life would be changed forever.
One of the first such changes was my focus shift from console games to PC games. Just a few months after owning my computer, I added a Diamond Monster II 3D graphics card based on the 3dfx Voodoo 2 chipset. It was an absolute screamer and took my gaming experience to a whole new level.
We all know how the story played out for 3dfx, the graphics company that dominated the 3d graphics industry for several years in the late 90s.
Capcom has announced and released the original Resident Evil, Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3 on Steam.
Two-day event includes exclusive reveals, trailers and playable games on show floor.
PlayStation PC revenue reached $300 million in 2023, but despite this success, it appears Sony may be pulling back from PC releases.
It's not a success unless we know the profit. It's the same reason I get on Xbox when they mention revenue.
If Sony is considering keeping their single player games exclusive to the PS systems despite the 300 million PC revenue, that means they didn't profit from the venture.
You are correct. Making 300 million doesn't mean anything if you have 299 million in operating costs. Clearly they are making some profit if they want to keep their multiplayer games on PC but what of their single player games?
How could they possibly not make a profit with $300M in revenue?
Nixxis only has about 90 employees. Let's go high and say each person on the payroll makes $200k per year; payroll would only be $18M. I believe the development time to port a game from PlayStation to PC is only about a year, so unless Sony is giving out Bentleys and 5 bedroom houses to each employee with payroll, they should be making a sizable profit.
See, the problem with what you said is we don't know what their operating costs were. So everything you're saying there is just speculation. What we do know is reported revenue and the rumored reporting that Sony is taking first party single player games out of the PC release cycle.
Not saying you're wrong, but we need to work with what we're given.
Here’s another angle of the argument. What if they saw a concerning decline in console sales and/or game sales on PS during this window of PC releases? It may be a crazy success on pc we don’t know but eating your own market share scare PlayStation for sure especially when they are trying to sell every new gen.
Ok, THIS makes sense. I don't know how I didn't think about that. And we know they'll want those PS6 sales to be off the charts. It's harder to do that if their in-house made blockbusters are shared with PC.
Given the recent price increase for their hardware... Sony should really rethink things. Having an additional revenue stream, even if the games come to PC a year after, is still money coming in. Those who wanted a 5 likely already got one, but that doesn't mean Sony should turn their backs on those who may still want to play their software on a PC.
Honestly, I think they are worried about PC piracy.... Getting their games on PC for free is... well its not hard at all. They have to know that and I am sure that goes into their calculus.
thats bogus. Early 2000's a lot of things got pirated sure, but most piracy that currently exists is because the companies themselves sell an inferior product than when you pirate it, denuvo, bad quality on movies/shows etc. It's not much anymore and other companies have been releasing their games on pc since the beginning of time and are doing fine and given the quality of sony's 1st party games they should have no issue making profit at all. Adding shit like having to log in to psn in order to play single players games because they wanna harvest your data, yes that's when I say people are in their right to pirate and sony can go suck a fatty.
We know exactly why they wouldn't want it, because they can't get people into their ecosystem and profit more off of them if they buy it for pc. Nothing more nothing less as with any other company it's only about money.
We buy more games than console gamers BTW. We have over 132 million users on steam so out of that if 2% pirate how can we all be labeled as pirates?
Real reason is sony probably didn't see the big benefits and that's on them because games come out a year later and costs full price
I disagree I think it's strategically in their best interest to remove PC as a pathway to access you need to encourage people to buy the console to play the games otherwise they won't
As soon as Xbox started putting games day one on PC sales of their consoles dropped off a cliff and piracy of their games went sky high
@michiel not true piracy exists because people want to play a game but don't want to pay for it. Piracy may have started really in the 80s but it's still going strong today if you look at any torrent and it's seed count you'll see just how strong the scene is
i specifically said "most piracy that currently exists", not all piracy that has ever existed.
I'm not believing that gamepass story, it's so counterintuitive. They didn't remove the option to be able to purchase a game and for short term they gave people a cheaper way to play it and THEN suddenly they started mass pirating them? yeah I'm not buying that.
Just took a look at GoW Ragnarok and the seed counts are either single or double digits, with 3 out of like 30 having triple digits, 2 of those being basically double digits cause they're so close and the other one a bit above 200. So strong........
Pc sucks and xbox is dead because they stupidly put games on pc and game pass. You like this dumb idea because you want sony down to xbox pathetic level.
Error the price hike effects hardware as well. By all accounts ps6 is designed to be able to be made as cheap as possible. Which should mean it's cheaper than ps5 pro at the very least. Pc parts are effected by increased hardware costs too so they have an obvious market position as the more affordable alternative and once people are in their ecosystem they are unlikely to abandon libraries and switch
And people think they’re going to give that up 🤣🤣
And it’ll be way more than 300m by now
If they make billions in sales on the actual console sure this isn't gross profit either
The value to the brand is significantly more important. Plus is this before or after steam takes their cut?
@Jammit
Majority of the sales is more than like from live service games, so it makes sense why they're pulling away their single player games. Which is honestly a good idea for those games and the brand. Also, if the 300M is revenue, steam taking a 30% cut means Sony is only getting around 210M. Now take aways how much they spent to bring those games to PC and you're looking at less than 200M. With majority of the money coming from live service games.
So easy to spot I wonder HOW YOU GUYS keep falling for his first almost sensible comment then keep getting more and more deranged 🤦🏿 😩.
Death Stranding is owned by Kojima (he purchased the rights back from sony.) Hence the eventual xbox port of the original. Not exactly a good example. Lets see if/when Yotei comes to pc, as that should have been announced already if going by their last first party developed titles ps5 release to pc announce timeline. It's looking more and more like the rumors are correct and Helix has has Sony rethinking pc releases. And why wouldn't they when it would guarantee a competing "console" has access to all their games without their say so.
I'd argue that 300 mill revenue without even considering what part is profit, is not nearly enough money to risk giving xbox access to PlayStation games.
Thats not a lot but still successful,when you consider some games costs over 100 million. But I still think Helix has something to do with them pulling back too.
They’re definitely panicked by helix
Helix also marks the end of their party PS exclusives - Sony can’t afford to keep 3rd party games off PC
🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣
Panicked by Helix? You probably also believed Xbox Games would never come to Playstation or Nintendo.
“They’re definitely panicked by helix” - 🤡🤡 I know you are a dumb little troll hurt by the demise of Xbox and the continued success of Playstation, but that is still a hell of a clown statement to make after Xbox series got whipped by Nex Playground in December… in 2026 Xbox doesn’t even show up as a skid mark next to PlayStation😬
Also, tech wise PlayStation is ahead of Xbox with PSSR. I can’t see Xbox coming up with anything that matches it. Ps6 is already WAY ahead of Helix
Seeing Quake for the first time with the 3Dfx Glide patch was just amazing! POD also blew me away at the time.
Ahhh Memories!
These were the days! The birth of graphics whores was upon us. Two 3dfx cards!? Monster fx?! Sadly, it's all I cared about at the time. They were great old games though. Consoles? Pfff!
Voodoo 2, holy @#*$ LOL. I miss the 90's.