And let the leaks begin. According to Kotaku’s Jason Schreier, Horizon Zero Dawn is coming to PCs this year. Their sources spoke anonymously due to the nature of Sony themselves not divulging the details yet. So, what does this mean for the PC to Playstation connection?
This would mark a monumental change in how Sony does business. The only other “exclusive” to make the leap to PCs would have been Death Stranding. Although, that is still a bit different since Kojima Productions were the ones that developed the title and is not a Sony owned studio.
With no in-depth knowledge of coding and actually developing a game, it seems that with console architecture more closely mimicking PC hardware (sorry Cell architecture), we just might see more games make the cross to PC. The big question, will this be tied only to games Sony has funded and published? And, will they be day and date in the future?
The most conservative estimate would be some wait period for PlayStation titles going over to PC. Unlike what Microsoft is already doing and having titles come out day and date with Xbox One. I’d have to imagine Sony’s titles would be on a holding period before arriving on some of the more popular launchers, such as Steam and the Epic Games Launcher. Sony doesn’t really have the infrastructure setup to easily manage a full fledged-online launcher / store by itself… yet.
If I were to take some leaps of logic, why wouldn’t Sony want to create an ecosystem and allow you to play exclusives day and date on a PC? Imagine Sony having a PC launcher that allows you to buy their exclusives and eventually, anything that has graced the system. New and old. While the easy counterpoint would be that they would be neutering their potential to sell console hardware? does that really matter? I’m pretty convinced that the long game would be for the dissolution of hardware somewhere on the horizon, albeit that might be quite a ways off with the current pricing difference between a console and comparable hardware.
In 2020, there is no reason for a company to have its ecosystem tied solely to one platform. While its been proven that strictly streaming isn’t the way to go (RIP Stadia? Pretty much, onLive, and so on), I think there’s a time where Sony’s PlayStation Network spans PCs as well. That time may very well be sooner than we all thought.
