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Horizon Zero Dawn It’s not on the PC yet, but it’s already making waves. The only time PlayStation has risen to the top of Steam’s best seller lists based solely on the strength of pre-orders, and I have to imagine it will work again when the game launches on August 7. For PS4 owners, the game is old, and now they are eager to Horizon: Forbidden West in 2021. PC gamers are clearly eager to leave.
It’s very important. The exclusive first-party development is arguably Sony’s greatest strength and the lynchpin of its hardware strategy. Exclusive games allowed the PS3 to bounce back from a difficult launch to finish the generation off right, and exclusive games allowed the PS4 to capitalize on Microsoft’s missteps to win the current generation. And, like Nintendo, the company has been understandably cautious in letting its most valuable properties out of the walled garden.
But Horizon Zero Dawn It shows a good example of Sony’s path forward here, which should mean even better visibility for your IP and more sales for both its hardware and software. Sure, you could argue that making exclusive games available elsewhere diminishes the incentive to buy a PlayStation console. But Zero Dawn He’s three years old now and probably won’t move a bunch of consoles. Launching on PC not only allows Sony to get some cash out of the sales force alone, it’s never a bad thing, but it introduces a ton of PC gamers to a new franchise. And who knows? Maybe it’s enough for them to consider a PS5 when it’s time to play the sequel.
So in the worst case, Sony makes a ton of money selling a video game, which is apparently the goal. At best, it generates publicity for its newer games and hardware and drives some even higher sales. Whatever happens, PC gamers have access to more games.
It’s part of a bigger shift in the industry as we move from simple hardware platforms to broader ecosystems. Microsoft is the standard bearer here, with its promise to bring all first-party exclusives to both PC and Xbox, and even to old Xbox One hardware for an unspecified period of time. But Sony agrees with that, both by bringing backwards compatibility to the PS5 and by starting to launch these somewhat older games on the PC.
For now: we all win. I have long championed the idea that if you have something that people want to buy, you should make an effort to sell it. But right now, we’re also seeing a dress rehearsal for the still-distant future of streaming in the cloud, where hardware platforms cease to exist and software ecosystems bear the day. It is not happening right now, but Sony and Microsoft know they will want as wide a user base as possible to prepare.
