I think this is a big enough initiative that it's happening one way or another. I'd imagine this is being funded by the PC ports and the intention being that future PC ports will save that 25 ish percent, particularly GaaS which have always been able to garner success outside of Steam and for the store to generate revenue from 3rd parties.
Imagine this, not only will take the 30% from steam for their games they would gain 30% from other games being sold in their PC store too. And that is really lucrative.
I mean it's definitely why people are still complaining about PSN logins. They see the writing on the wall here. They see people getting a taste before Sony tries to drag them to their own launcher. It's happened before.
That is why I think the rage is media pr blitz, because logically it makes no sense, almost all publishers have login account thing, I remember the ea/Ubisoft version being so horrible you couldn't always play the game. Just get stuck in login in, and that was years ago.
I'm not sure how much Sony really values their relationship with Steam.
Well it isn't going so well, during the ps login, they turned off many countries in one go. Showing them the middle finger, for a practice every publisher has.
There is no solving stuttergate. It's not related to the launcher, it's how the games are designed on PC with DX12 and UE5.
if you control the installation, some issues causing stuttergate can be fixed, one of which is forcing the shader compliation, even on the background. The other would be to create tooling like they have for ps5 to find those issues regarding streaming of assets stutter. Allot it possible, currently it makes the PC space a joke, pay 4k for a pc, that takes enough electricity to power your washing machine to still having issues, and having the assets were made for the ps5, having to resort to dlss magic with it's drawbacks to get more out of it. But how many people have monitor that can even handle 200 fps, and then still stutters, crashes, changing ini files, Come on now. That is like a second job, that you have to pay for.
The PS Store is really bad, but this is also an opportunity to make improvements.
I think it's an improvement from the PS3 and PS4 store that always felt janky to me. I often wonder how much of the issues around the store are actually on purpose. So that they can promote the games they want to promote.
On the ps4 store I was able to discover new titles, and I was able to find the games I was looking for. Maybe those low quality games now are the issue.