I always enjoy the aging demographic of Steam gamers conflating PC with only Steam.
You mean Roblox, Minecraft, League of Legends, Fortnite etc. all failed having their own launcher not being on Steam? They do have one thing in common, a younger demographic. Hell Battlenet wasn't on Steam prior to the MS purchase.
This is what steam fanboys don't realize.
Some of the largest games on PC aren't even on Steam and had no problem gaining an audience without steam.
I take it back. They do realize it and they're afraid of what that means.
Fortnite - not on steam
Minecraft - not on steam
Roblox - not on steam
Lol/Valorant - not on steam
Rocket League - not on steam
That people are convinced that games can't be successful on steam despite the evidence is really everything you need to know. Sony's PC launcher will house their GaaS games as well as their single player games. Maybe some of these games are on steam and maybe some of them aren't. Sony will also look to throw some of their exclusive budget from foreclosing on Xbox to foreclosing on steam.
They will slowly build out a 3rd party platform and it's simply increased revenue.
When/if Helldivers goes F2P, they could launch it F2P exclusively on the PSN PC Store. We'll see if Sony can keep their quality standards as they embrace more GaaS type games.
It's so interesting to see people so shortsighted when it comes to Sony's PC plans, but often fanboy blinders go up first.
All of this to say that Sony could have 1/20th the users of Steam on their launcher and still be successful. And this is also where I think Sony will start to buy some more studios and why they MIGHT buy a company like FromSoftware/Kadokawa to launch Elden Ring 2 exclusively on PlayStation platforms.
I do think we'll see Sony slowly walk away from Steam in the years to come as they shift more and more of their focus on their own launcher and storefront, but there are some things we generally know, like Marathon has a planned Steam release and it isn't coming out until 2025, but we also know that it wasn't planned to release for 2025, so that could always change.