"For us, the solution was pretty obvious": why Sony will actively port games to PC

Yesterday it became known that Days Gone will be the next PlayStation exclusive to appear on PC. Obviously, Sony wants to expand its audience in this way. However, there were other factors that influenced the company’s decision to port its games to another platform.This was stated in an interview with GQ by Jim Ryan, head of Sony Interactive Entertainment.

According to Ryan, in 2021, the internal development studios are in the best shape, and therefore now is the time to port some exclusives from PS4 to PC.

In the future, the appearance of a number of key Sony exclusives on PC may motivate some users to buy a PlayStation 5, including to play upcoming sequels on release.

Analyst Daniel Ahmad is not surprised by this news either, who considers this a great opportunity for Sony to additionally monetize its back catalog. He also names a number of other reasons that could have influenced the company’s decision:

• in this case, Sony has nothing to lose. The games of its internal studios have already reached peak sales on PS4, and therefore releasing them on PC is a logical way to extend the life cycle of single story projects.;PS4 is based on the x86 architecture, so porting games to PC has become much easier compared to projects from previous generations of PlayStation;
• Sony does not consider the PC as a competing platform.
• This does not mean that all PS4 titles will eventually appear on the PC.

It is also important to understand that Sony’s new strategy applies only to projects from the back catalog – projects under development will probably remain platform exclusives for at least several years after release.

In an interview with GQ, Ryan shared other company plans for this year:

• PS VR of the second generation. The device does not have a release date yet, but it is already known that it will be connected with just one wire. The developers also promise to take into account a number of errors of the first model;the release of Days Gone on PC will take place in the spring of 2021.
• It will be the first PlayStation 4 exclusive to be released outside of the Sony platform this year.;Gran Turismo 7 was postponed to 2022 due to the difficulties of developing critical elements of the game caused by the COVID-19 pandemic;
• The development of Returnal, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and Horizon Forbidden West is going according to plan.
• This means that the latter can really be released before the end of the year;Ryan didn’t say a word about the new God of War.
• Journalist Jason Schreier believes that the game will obviously not be released in 2021;Sony will resume distributing games under the Play At Home program.
• In March, it will be possible to get Ratchet & Clank 2016 forever.