The fact that recent rumors/news from Sony elicited this kind of reaction shows that there will absolutely be some impact.
It would certainly be good news if Sony were to release its catalogue on PC, since it means that their games can reach more people. But we shouldn‘t forget that economic activities and exchanges are always trade-offs. Sony‘s games reaching a larger market is a good thing to be sure, but wouldn‘t it be even ‚better‘ if Sony just released all their games for free? Or if Sony launched a 20TF PS5 for 99$? I think we all agree that that would be nice in the short term, but that it would probably lead to Sony‘s bankruptcy in the long term. The reason we pay for games and hardware is because there wouldn‘t be any games if we didn‘t. It‘s a trade-off for us consumers, just as it is a trade-off for Sony not to be able to release a 3TF PS5 for 999$, since they probably wouldn‘t sell any consoles at all in that case. Economic exchanges have to be acceptable trade-offs for both parties, otherwise no one would buy or sell anything.
I know that this sounds kind of obvious, but it’s something we should keep in mind when predicting what companies will or won’t do in the future. The question that should be asked is: Was Sony‘s past policy of not releasing their games on PC, and thus limiting their market reach, an acceptable trade-off for them? I think most would agree that it was, because while they didn‘t sell their games on PC, having an exclusive catalogue of games for their platform offered an incentive for consumers to buy their consoles. And having a large installed base of proprietary hardware gives console manufacturers access to a nice, juicy revenue stream from third party licensing fees and (more recently) subscriptions. If Sony now decides to release their games on PC, then they must have decided that this trade-off is no longer worth it – despite the fact that their gaming division right now is more profitable than at any other point of its history. So what changed?
When I first read that Sony games might appear on PC, my first thought was that it had to do with PSNow. I thought they would expand the catalogue of games they have on that service, and allow subscribers to download games to PC (or other compatible hardware). This would make sense, since consumers would still remain in the Sony ‚ecosystem‘, even if they don‘t have a Playstation console. But the rumor is that they intend to release their games on services like Steam as well, which is what really surprised me. If they actually intend to release even their newer games on Steam or other online stores, then I wonder what made them take such a drastic step. PC gaming these days is more accessible than ever, we shouldn‘t make the mistake of comparing it to the dark ages of the pre-2005 era. And consoles aren‘t as easy and ‚plug and play‘ as they were in the past either. Nowadays it‘s not uncommon to have to wait half a day until your game (and its updates) are downloaded, even if you bought the physical release. The accessibility gulf between consoles and PC isn’t nearly as wide as it was ten or fifteen years ago. I could easily see Sony losing 10-15% of their potential future installed base to the PC market. That might not sound like much, but it would mean 10-15% less licensing fees and potential PS+ subscriptions. We‘re talking about billions of dollars over the course of a generation here.
So we are going to just rewrite the definition of automatically huh?, anyway it's whatever. I find that PC centric individuals will find a reason to justify anything.
