Taking the PC port into account all the way throughout development is not the same as the release schedule.
That's true, but I'm not talking about Day 1 PC for non live-service games. Just more that if PC is taken into consideration during the development of the game, even if it's years between PS5 and PC releases, whatever is considered for the minimum spec on the PC may act as a foil to what ways the game could push the PS5 hardware, potentially.
Because when you look at those Steam GPU charts, a lot of the GPUs in the Top 5 or Top 10 (or should say, make up the top 30%) aren't at PS5's level performance-wise. So what if a team who would've otherwise made a game tailored for PS5-level performance, downscale the scope of their game on PS5 to accommodate for a wider array of PC users if & when a PC port is eventually released, just to make future porting work to PC easier instead of cutting down features from the base version of PS5 to run on lower-end PCs fitting the minimum requirement (I mean features beyond just turning down the resolution or reducing framerates a bit for PC minimum spec)?
Although I know also that not all 1P games are going to use the PS5 hardware at its full capacity, and it's going to depend on the game. So it's not necessarily an issue if the minimum requirements for a PC are a bit lower than PS5 performance tier because different 1P games would push the PS5 to different levels and in different ways. I just hope the actual GPUs in the top 30% or 40% or what-have-you are a bit closer to PS5-level performance in any case within a few years. It would be an issue IMO if the most popular GPUs are still the 1060 and 1660 Ti.
There is no vagueness on their statements. Sony said their main development teams like ND will continue focused on PS only game. Some of their games -not all their future games- will be ported by other teams to PC where will be released years later than their original PS release, at least a year in the case of the SP/non-GaaS ones.
In the case of the GaaS, they said that some of them might even be released on PC even probably day one, but this doesn't mean all their GaaS will be released on PC and doesn't mean that all the ones released on PC will be released on PC day one.
I hear you. But I'm just waiting to see what the actual release schedule on this front pans out like before committing to believing 100% what's been said. If you told me back in 2020 that in the span of like four months Sony'd of released 4 or so 1P games onto PC, I wouldn't have believed you.
Knowing that, it's fair to assume that future ND games will end sooner or later ported to PC, so makes sense to adapt their engine and pipeline to PC games. Their engine already has a PC base added by the porters with TLOUP1 and the Uncharted remakes, so it will be there for future projects. Probably added PC and mouse in addition to gamepad to make testing the game while developing faster, in case they didn't already had it before.
In fact, many of these things probably already had it since many years ago before they planned to start porting their stuff on PC, just for the sake of internal testing and allowing their devs test their stuff on their own PC instead of constantly needing to make new builds in the devkits/testkits in order to save a lot of time waiting for these new builds to test stuff. Nowadays with all the remote work is even more important, so testing their own stuff in their own PC without devkit required is more important.
Well the way you're describing it, if this post is just signifying a more integrated way to handle PC input device testing, debugging etc. for whenever the time comes for them to consider a port of their game to PC, but otherwise when planning/scoping the game's features and design out the only baseline spec being factored into the picture is the PS5 console itself, then that would be good.
But it also seems like those sort of things, they would already have set up in some form as you said, it could be they are iterating on what they currently have to make testing for PC platforms even easier. Would that have really been worth mentioning though, is my question. Especially considering in ND's case we know very little about TLOU3, Uncharted 5, their original IP or even TLOU2 Factions, and they've just released Uncharted Legacy Collection on PC, is there really a big contingent of PS fans who want to hear about yet more PC-related news right now?
This doesn't mean that ND will make the whole PC port or that they are considering to put all their games on PC, or to release them day one or soon. It means that now they consider PC as one very likely platform where they'll release their games so will integrate it on their pipeline. They'll do their games mainly for PS5 but will work on their gamedev PCs, which in AAA games typically means ultrapowerful monsters to run future high end games very unoptimized until the last periods of development and with a lot of debugging and profiling stuff running on top. As I remember that the original very first The Division 1 reveal trailer was recorded running on a PC with 24GB of RAM, which for the time was something really insane. I saw the extended unedited version of that gameplay video back then.
Again, this part is perfectly normal and would be expected, that's not where the potential concern comes in. The concern is if, in prioritizing for PC ports as an eventuality, they factor in minimum PC specifications for future releases that are notably below the PS5's performance capabilities and therefore scope the game out to be manageable for such minimum specifications and just focus on parts of the design process that can easily "scale up" for PS5 and more powerful PCs like framerate and resolution.
Because that was something that was and kind of still is a concern for myself and others when it came to Series X and Series S. However I don't think the worry is as potentially bad on Sony's end because the minimum spec on PC can change depending on the game and scale up over time as it always does (the speed it scales up at may be a bit iffy). With MS, Series X and higher-end PC will always be anchored by the Series S, with its static performance that will remain at that profile for several years.
Like we just got a leaked screenshot of Avowed (maybe) that looks pretty good at least at sub-HD resolution. There is still lots in terms of asset and texture detail that is relatively simple in that shot, though. Is that going to end up being a purely stylistic choice, and if so is it in part of needing to consider Series S as the baseline and making the scoping of the game in a way where the "scale up" approach can be done more easily rather than trying to "scale down" things that don't scale down so easily?
See how that could potentially manifest with PS5 & PC depending on how much PC as a platform is targeted in closer proximity & importance with PS5 for future releases? And again, I know different 1P games will have different performance profiles; it's also worth saying Sony's 1P teams have proven they can do the most with lower-performance hardware than pretty much any other stable of devs in the industry IMO, just look at TLOU 2 and HFW (the latter being cross-gen and looks & runs fantastic on base PS4).
So I'm willing to admit my curiosities on this topic could very well be potentially unfounded, and I might be letting some of the more evident issues with some of Microsoft's and some 3P dev's issues in balancing optimization and porting needs between console & PC while maintaining high performance scope pushing a specific hardware design, into this, when I actually shouldn't let that be happening.
And later another team of PC porters will make the commercial PC versions: will further optimize stuff, add extra settings, implement the latest PC specific tech like DLSS and similar stuff, additional things like ultrawide screen and adapt the game to non 16:9 aspect ratios if needed (like 16:10 for SteamDeck), implement and cut stuff to scale it down as needed to make it run decently on PCs that are less powerful than the consoles (like SteamDeck), will fix many compatibility issues and PC specific bugs that may appear and a lot of other additional boring work more like adapting the trophies or implementing other Steam specific stuff required to release it as a commercial port that doesn't need to be done for the console release.
The bolded are things that I think could create their own headaches for some over time, on the consumer side. I'm curious to see how Sony handle marketing for 1P games between console & PC, especially for games that are Day 1 (like some of the live-service games) or where people on console know a PC version is imminent before the console version releases (like TLOU Part 1 Remake, which did pretty well on NPD but some think it should've done better and I wonder if putting out that the PC version is on the way may've dinged some potential sales on PS5).
IMO some of those bonus features on PC you talk about, I think they need to try bringing at least as many of them to the console side as possible. Some of those would probably need a PS5 Pro, like better RT and even higher framerates, but I still think it's in their best interest to try keeping as many potential players, especially competitive players for the live-service games, on PS consoles as possible. So adding ultrawide monitor support, support for 240 Hz monitors, KB&M etc. on PS5 for those games should also be a big focus because it ultimately still benefits Sony to have as many of those & other players
buying the content on their storefront and hardware than someone else's...
...unless their PC plans also include a storefront that they will attempt prioritizing (at least for 1P content) over something like Steam
. But there is no word on that for the time being.
This additional work of the PC porters doesn't need to be done while they are developing the game. ND will do the PS5 version keeping in the game some base code to run it on PC, and in some games during development and in some other games year later the porters will do the rest of the work.
And even if when releasing the PS5 version in some cases they may have ready -or almost- a PC port, doesn't mean they'll release it when ready. Due to Sony's strategy they may decide to keep the PC port in the shelf during a few years before releasing it -or maybe even to don't release it- because they may want to sell as much units on PS and put it on PS+ before relesing it on PC to use it as selling point and to save the 30% revenue share that Steam gets, or maybe want to save the PC port for another priod of the year with less competition or to align it with the release of a sequel or movie/tv series adaptation or something like that, or maybe to separate it from other PC releases they may have around that period.
This is the Catch-22 though: if they spend all those resources on a PC port, why put it on the shelf to then never release it? To maximize sales on PS consoles, before bringing it to PS+, before then finally to PC but then just decide not to release it on PC?
Well the sales on PlayStation would have to be very good but, if an expectation among a certain contingent of customers on the console side who may also either have PCs or laptops for playing those games at good enough settings, know a PC version is coming (either because it was already announced or there's enough of a pattern beforehand that can be used to extrapolate an educated guess) and don't necessarily have FOMO (they can wait)...can't they just not buy the PS5 version which in turn would increase the likelihood of the PC version to release after all?
See that's the rub on all of this. There's a kind of chicken-and-egg scenario at play here IMO, and Sony have to be delicate in how they handle it. That's if they really want to commit to expanding on PC like that with console game ports, anyway: Uncharted Lost Legacy collection apparently peaked at ~ 11K on Steam or at least that's what people are saying. Which is a lot lower than other Sony ports so far, and likely indicates worst sales on Steam as a result.
I guess we'll see how the Steam numbers for UC Legacy pan out after a few days but a few more ports to PC performing similarly (in terms of likely sales, mainly) and I think either this whole PC porting strategy is either folded altogether or Sony does what I think would have probably been a more optimal strategy at least to start with: keep the console games on console and invest in a PC-centric game exclusively for that platform which can maybe get a PS4/PS5 port down the line. That way there's no risk of the primary having to bleed a little for the secondary.
Sony's PC strategy atm is like, if Nintendo had similar with mobile, they would've ported Mario Kart 8 after its first two years on Switch to smartphones instead of making a dedicated Mario Kart game only for mobile, or port a new Pokemon release for Switch to mobile after the first year or two. Those don't make sense, and those markets are even more theoretically different than the PC market is from console, but Nintendo would not make those kind of ports because they probably feel it would cut into sales revenue on Switch (and hardware sales of Switch in general) by doing so from a cumulative build-up of the ports themselves, any shifting narratives due to them (and perceived trends affecting future releases), etc.
So that's a big reason I'm still perplexed with the particular way Sony are doing their PC strategy, not that they want to support PC more as a platform in and of itself. I personally don't see how PC getting ports of Sony's games, particularly non live-service/GaaS ones, is going to monumentally increase software revenue off 1P sales, when I think simply getting way more PS5s into homes (along with continuing with the high quality of games naturally bringing more and more people into interest for them) would accomplish the same (and increasingly economically over time given the likelihood of slimmer revisions and that rumored revision with the fit-to-form Blu-Ray drive) .
But that's just my opinion, and it'll probably turn out to be wrong. We shall see.
