Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart peaks at less than 9k concurrent players on Steam, third worst PC launch for PlayStation game

flaccidsnake

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Yet they don't because they want to reach as many people as possible with the PC release. You are thinking about it wrong.


Minimum specs for R&C Rift Apart a "PS5 only" game:
RX 470 (GPU release in 2016 for $170)
Ryzen 3 3100 (4 cores CPU)
8 GB RAM

You guys are just in denial, these games are made to target the weakest stuff possible.

How is this bad? Ratchet now runs on handheld PCs and scales up to better than PS5. Why would anyone deny something good?
 

Systemshock2023

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If games on the ps5 were to be released at 720p 30 and absolutely hammering that CPU/GPU then we would see a true generational leap. Meanwhile the extra power over the ps4 is just being used for higher resolutions and framerates with some RT and those are the easiest things to scale down on PC.

You folks talk about old PCs being the bare minimum but forget about the elephant in the room, the console that will set the tone for the remaining years of the 9th gen and early cross gen, specially in Japan

The Switch 2

The first one was an overnight success and devs weren't exactly planning to support it from scratch, but this one... seeing how switch will end up selling 135M, third parties sure as hell want a piece of that pie.
 
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anonpuffs

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Thinking launch sales for a port of what is now a years old catalog titles is the end all be all is a serious misreading of what the PC market is for Sony. Ratchet and Clank will be a silent long seller that probably does 100's of thousands life time.

The real money will be in the day one PC versions released with PS5, which Sony is probably going to do by the end of this gen. Not investing in the PC market is just leaving money on the table, and the PlayStation console is a big enough, entrenched brand that it won't be harmed.
I really don't think so. Long tail sales for ratchet and clank won't be very large. This might change if Sony invests in an animated TV series or movie that is a hit with the younger crowd, but there's no evidence anything like that is happening. There just isn't an audience for these types of games on PC, especially with the poor initial showing. Maybe in the future if it's discounted to $20.
 

PlacidusaX

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Thinking launch sales for a port of what is now a years old catalog titles is the end all be all is a serious misreading of what the PC market is for Sony. Ratchet and Clank will be a silent long seller that probably does 100's of thousands life time.

The real money will be in the day one PC versions released with PS5, which Sony is probably going to do by the end of this gen. Not investing in the PC market is just leaving money on the table, and the PlayStation console is a big enough, entrenched brand that it won't be harmed.
Nahh the sting from the lack of sales will cause Sony to take notice which will thankfully make day one non GAAS games less likely.
 

PlacidusaX

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If games on the ps5 were to be released at 720p 30 and absolutely hammering that CPU/GPU then we would see a true generational leap. Meanwhile the extra power over the ps4 is just being used for higher resolutions and framerates with some RT and those are the easiest things to scale down on PC.

You folks talk about old PCs being the bare minimum but forget about the elephant in the room, the console that will set the tone for the remaining years of the 9th gen and early cross gen, specially in Japan

The Switch 2

The first one was an overnight success and devs weren't exactly planning to support it from scratch, but this one... seeing how switch will end up selling 135M, third parties sure as hell want a piece of that pie.
We see a true generational leap when the games are only made for PS5.

The suffering comes when 3rd party games support inferior PC tech.

If these 3rd parties would take the nipple out the mouth of the PC and just design for this gens consoles... things would be different.
 

VillaiN

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Thinking launch sales for a port of what is now a years old catalog titles is the end all be all is a serious misreading of what the PC market is for Sony. Ratchet and Clank will be a silent long seller that probably does 100's of thousands life time.

The real money will be in the day one PC versions released with PS5, which Sony is probably going to do by the end of this gen. Not investing in the PC market is just leaving money on the table, and the PlayStation console is a big enough, entrenched brand that it won't be harmed.
Day one with pc? How re they going to explain to market and users same game s 80 euros on ps5 and 60 on pc?

Cause im sure pc beggars wont touch 80 euros games.
 
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Nhomnhom

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How is this bad? Ratchet now runs on handheld PCs and scales up to better than PS5. Why would anyone deny something good?
So you think games being made for old PCs + PS5 is a better idea than games just made for PS5? Did you also think this was a great idea when MS started to do it 8 years ago?
 

Welfare

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That is wishful thinking....this game isn't doing anything significant years down the line. This game isn't doing more than 100k life time and that's generous.

"leaving money on the table", weren't you just making posts about how awful Xbox has been doing...? The company that does day and date PC, clearly PC hasn't done much to help them the last 7 years as they've only become more irrelevant. I really wish Xbox fanboys would stop being disingenuous, trying to over rate the impact on PC just because Microsoft does it. The saying "misery loves company" is really true....
Ratchet is going to sell on Steam for years and be part of numerous sales. It'll easily go past 100K.

Xbox makes more revenue from software than ever before thanks to also being on Steam. The hardware business being ass is separate to that since we have confirmation Xbox is, or was, trying to grow cloud in place of console. Age of Empires, Forza Horizon, Sea of Thieves, and Halo MCC have done and will continue to do decent to great numbers on Steam.

I really don't think so. Long tail sales for ratchet and clank won't be very large. This might change if Sony invests in an animated TV series or movie that is a hit with the younger crowd, but there's no evidence anything like that is happening. There just isn't an audience for these types of games on PC, especially with the poor initial showing. Maybe in the future if it's discounted to $20.
That's the whole point. Being on sale for $20 multiple times over the course of years. It's how Sony already sells its PS software after month 1.

Look at Nintnedo or Capcom. Catalog sales are massive and represent a major part of the business. Nintnedo does it by making games of the generation that are evergreen to their platform and Capcom releases every game they have on every platform possible. For Capcom specifically, those sales add up over time. Sony in time is going to have a lot of PC titles that just exist on Steam and will be purchased.
Nahh the sting from the lack of sales will cause Sony to take notice which will thankfully make day one non GAAS games less likely.
I hope you realize that if Sony is missing targets on PC due to the current strategy of late ports, they'll sooner come to the conclusion to go day and date with PS5 than not.
Day one with pc? How re they going to explain to market and users same game s 80 euros on ps5 and 60 on pc?

Cause im sure pc beggars wont touch 80 euros games.
Since this thread is complaining about launch sales, PC gamers absolutely buy games at launch for launch prices. Hogwarts sold over 500K of the deluxe edition.
 
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flaccidsnake

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We see a true generational leap when the games are only made for PS5.

The suffering comes when 3rd party games support inferior PC tech.

If these 3rd parties would take the nipple out the mouth of the PC and just design for this gens consoles... things would be different.
Have you heard of the 4090? Consoles have been holding back game tech since the 00s.
 

flaccidsnake

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Eat some grasses too.

I do believe PC players are entitled, they want everything ported to their system. Like idk, instead of spending money to upgrade, just buy a console. When their games run just a little worse than console they just bitching about it nonstop.
Everyone should want everything ported to PC because it's the only platform that lasts. It sucks to play MotorStorm Pacific Rift on a stock PS3 today. Even if you got a PS3, you gotta use a wack controller, the framerate is unstable, the servers are long dead, it's locked to 720p. None of that would be a problem if it had come out on PC.
 

Darth Vader

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Eat some grasses too.

I do believe PC players are entitled, they want everything ported to their system. Like idk, instead of spending money to upgrade, just buy a console. When their games run just a little worse than console they just bitching about it nonstop.

What PC players? The ones, like me, that own a middle of the pack / mid to high end machine, and a console? The ones that own a potato and play lawnmower simulator? The ones that pirate every single game? The ones that spend 10k on a new rig because reasons?

Everyone should want everything ported to PC because it's the only platform that lasts. It sucks to play MotorStorm Pacific Rift on a stock PS3 today. Even if you got a PS3, you gotta use a wack controller, the framerate is unstable, the servers are long dead, it's locked to 720p. None of that would be a problem if it had come out on PC.

Bullshit. You act as if there are not countless games released on PC that have shoddy if non-existent compatibility with modern hardware. Additionally, developing for thousands of possible hardware configurations vs a single SKU will never be comparable. If you want to play console games, buy a console, stop begging.
 

historia

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What PC players? The ones, like me, that own a middle of the pack / mid to high end machine, and a console? The ones that own a potato and play lawnmower simulator? The ones that pirate every single game? The ones that spend 10k on a new rig because reasons?
I mean some "PC players". Just some interactions I have with PC players.

I ran a games info message boards, usually news and guides I think for like 20 years now.

Everytime there is a game release without PC releases, a lot of people just lose their shit, spamming and derailing threads.

Bloodborne for example, DS1 PC players just lose their shit because they cannot play it. Same for Bayonetta 2.

2 years ago, Moon Princess game broke our message board so we have to use different backend and switch to Cloudflare. It was only probably less than 100 people but they are so vocal about it, it is actually scary.

In my country PC gaming is basically ways smaller than consoles and it already gets that bad.
 

Darth Vader

I find your lack of faith disturbing
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2 years ago, Moon Princess game broke our message board so we have to use different backend and switch to Cloudflare. It was only probably less than 100 people but they are so vocal about it, it is actually scary.

This kind of exemplifies what I meant, thank you. Loud people =/= all people, or even the majority. The majority of PC players doesn't give a shit about games being ported or not. They are a very vocal minority, kinda like Xbox fans.
 
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Xbox makes more revenue from software than ever before thanks to also being on Steam. The hardware business being ass is separate to that since we have confirmation Xbox is, or was, trying to grow cloud in place of console. Age of Empires, Forza Horizon, Sea of Thieves, and Halo MCC have done and will continue to do decent to great numbers on Steam.


That's the whole point. Being on sale for $20 multiple times over the course of years. It's how Sony already sells its PS software after month 1.

Look at Nintnedo or Capcom. Catalog sales are massive and represent a major part of the business. Nintnedo does it by making games of the generation that are evergreen to their platform and Capcom releases every game they have on every platform possible. For Capcom specifically, those sales add up over time. Sony in time is going to have a lot of PC titles that just exist on Steam and will be purchased.

This is such a disingenuous point to tie Nintendo into. You KNOW that Nintendo barely ever budges on the price for their games. Ever. Nintendo's catalog sales are done with games that retain 85% of the original MSRP several years down the line, and they have a fanbase and media on their side who 100% support it despite claiming games costing $70 at launch was "anti-consumer" by a certain company until a certain other company also raised their new game prices to $70 a couple or so years later.

You are, firstly, overestimating the total number of Steam sales; the 130 million users reported doesn't represent 130 million buying customers. I'm sure for a lot of Steam users, the account is part of their extended social media presence. Sell 100K on Steam at $20 a copy nets Sony significantly less profit than selling 1 million at $70 on a platform where they retain all the revenue themselves, that's just simple math.

Xbox makes more revenue from software because they purchased Elder Scrolls Online, Fallout '76 and Minecraft, and the revenue of those games are now part of Xbox division's revenue. Also I would temper your expectations for sales of games like Forza Horizon, Sea of Thieves, Halo MCC etc. on Steam; those games at this point are moving closer to maybe 2K-3K a month, and sometimes that is with aggressive pricing sales. If the numbers were significantly higher, the average concurrent player counts and monthly player counts would see big jumps, but they don't.

I hope you realize that if Sony is missing targets on PC due to the current strategy of late ports, they'll sooner come to the conclusion to go day and date with PS5 than not.

And in doing that they'll kill off a lot of the appeal of the console for enthusiasts in the ecosystem. Which will lead to a noted drop in overall revenue as some of those enthusiasts switch to Steam for their purchases of not just Sony games but 3P games they'd of otherwise bought on PlayStation, drop their PS+ subscriptions, and opt out of buying the next console.

All the things we've seen with Xbox over the years, in addition to general brand rot in terms of a firm identity. At least Microsoft has a vested interest on PC with owning the predominant OS there used for gaming, and having deals with all the OEMs who build PCs and laptops in that PC space. Sony has zero of those vested interests, or even their own PC storefront.

Since this thread is complaining about launch sales, PC gamers absolutely buy games at launch for launch prices. Hogwarts sold over 500K of the deluxe edition.

Hogwarts is an anomaly for performance of sales on PC. Typical launch numbers, even for other AAA games, are much lower.
 

PlacidusaX

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Eat some grasses too.

I do believe PC players are entitled, they want everything ported to their system. Like idk, instead of spending money to upgrade, just buy a console. When their games run just a little worse than console they just bitching about it nonstop.
Especially when a $399 PS5 not only plays AAA exclusives but offers certain better looking games in some genres.
 

Systemshock2023

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I am not sure if consoles hold back tech, specially the ones from Sony and MS. They provide a new baseline.

But sure as hell gaming PCs never did. Do you guys think that a 4790k won't be able to run 9th gen games decently?

PC gamers with high end rigs Haswell and up have been cruising through the 8th gen.
 

flaccidsnake

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Bullshit. You act as if there are not countless games released on PC that have shoddy if non-existent compatibility with modern hardware. Additionally, developing for thousands of possible hardware configurations vs a single SKU will never be comparable. If you want to play console games, buy a console, stop begging.
I made like 8 points in that thread, all 100% correct. You start your response with 'bullshit' is if that negates it.

Developers aren't targeting "thousands of possible hardware configurations". They're targeting the x86 CPU standard and some graphics api like DX12, DX11, Vulkan. Often they're not even going that deep, instead targeting mature portable engines like UE4 and Unity. There are many games that launch in a shoddy state, but there aren't many games still in that state, shit gets fixed. Meanwhile every game from the PS3 era that was ported to PC runs in 4k and generally holds up nicely. Games from 2005 running on PC don't feel retro, they have perfect image quality and unlimited framerate on any GPU in the last few years.

Rooting against PC is rooting against yourself. Any fleeting issue with PC gaming is nothing compared to preserving by far the biggest library of games going back to the 80s. PC (w/ Steam) IS gaming, while every console is just an incomplete reflection of gaming at some point in time.