Apologies, long post ahead
1. Ghost of Tsushima has been talked about in PC gaming circles for literal years up to the release of it, and it only got louder and louder when the NVIDIA leaks happened and Ghost of Tsushima had been on that list, and then as more games from the leak were ported, there was more hype for it. Last I checked, I don't think anyone was nearly as hyped for GoW or its sequel as they were Ghost of Tsushima. Sony has a problem with marketing their PC ports and I feel like it is so they don't have to pay for marketing, making profiting from ports even easier than it already is.
2. Banana got no marketing, it was a joke game, but people found out you could make IRL money by selling the inventory items, so MANY people ran auto clickers trying to farm inventory items, Banana's FREE TO PLAY "success" was a money-making scheme.
3. Palworld had more marketing then you could ever believe, especially when it was pushed at Xbox Games Showcase and then at Summer Games Fest (could be the reverse order)
4. PC players will notice when it gets a big update because it literally says there is an update for Helldivers 2 in their library with patch notes right in front of your face for you to click and read. They will not notice a game being released without marketing or massive hype that somehow lasted years and years telling them a game is coming.
5. views are not unique I can go and click a video 100 times and it will count it as 100 views, and bots do count for views. (not intentional botting, rather bots finding the video) [not saying all views are bots]
6. "the fact that a PSN account was needed for the single player campaign would also be criticized." This is not true, a PSN account was only needed for the online portion of the game and was not required for you to play the campaign of the game.
7. I don't think anyone really cares about Lego Horizon, I know I don't, I know my friends don't, I haven't seen any hype for it on Twitter or Youtube and I know some people on this very forum couldn't care less about it, but I could just be in the wrong circles. Until Dawn may be the only one that does well and even then, I severely doubt it, anyone who really wanted to play that game already would have got a console for it years ago instead of waiting and hoping for a port that makes zero logistical sense.
I didn't know that only the multiplayer mode of GoT required a PSN account. But that means that it still wasn't sold where PSN doesn't exist, right?
Why some leaks, which not everyone hears about, should be a reason for more hype is just as unclear to me as clicking on trailers multiple times. The thing was nominated for GOTY again, so every PC gamer will have noticed it. A lot of things were leaked in the Nvidia leak in particular, such as FF Tactics, FF9 Remake or GT7 Port, which have not yet been announced. And since GoW Ragnarök is a sequel and continues the story, it led to significantly more anticipation, hype and sales figures, at least among Playstation fans, than a new IP like Ghost of Tsushima. In my opinion it was pushed by a lot of LoU2 haters and, for example, voted highly as a community GOTY in the TGA.
Maybe I'm just looking at this from the perspective of a console gamer. I'm aware that PC gamers have completely different tastes and think differently. Nevertheless, I still find it hard to understand how one of the biggest PS5 titles is almost ignored there. Anyone who knows a bit about games knows the title, the trailer has been seen countless times.
I'm aware that there's hardly any hype about Lego Horizon, hence my point that it will score points primarily as a family game. It also depends on the price, but PC gamers always say that day 1 games from Sony are guaranteed to sell better on PC than ports. If Lego Horizon gets good ratings of 80+, looks better on PC than on PS5 and costs a maximum of $60, I see no reason why it shouldn't reach 100,000 CCU when worse titles are always "surprise hits" on Steam.
Sea of Thieves also goes against all this hype and marketing argument. The game was never announced with an official trailer for Playstation, but some people still saw the announcement, which made it a huge success on Playstation. Without much hype, without much marketing. It's hard to imagine that PC gamers would need a lot of marketing or hype to buy Ragnarök. My theories still stand, either a boycott, many didn't like the predecessor, or it was pirated. HFW was also quickly "removed of copy protection", which was obviously reflected in the numbers. I don't know how it was with Ghost of Tsushima.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter, we'll have to wait for official numbers in business reports to find out whether the ports flopped. But Until Dawn and Lego Horizon on PS5 certainly won't be huge hits either.
