To add upon this, and I know some people may find it offensive, but when people talk about port-begging... Just read the first few comments.
E.g.
There's also plenty of comments from people that got rid of their console and moved to PC. Then we have people saying this won't impact playstation's bottom line when they are making less money per game and pretty much screwing their product experience. Less money from games, peripherals, their own store... The vision is so short sighted.
The entire idea that there's no crossover between the console space and PC gaming space is fundamentally false. In fact, the PC gaming market as it exists today, owes its existence to the console industry. When the AAA PC gaming space nosedived in the early 2000s, those devs started focusing on console, primarily Xbox, gradually.
This ramped up considerably with the 7th gen as Western PC devs leveraged the console base to focus their AAA development on, in turn meaning the PC could still get games like that, but only thanks to the existence of the consoles. A LOT of PC-only gamers from the '90s and early '00s migrated to consoles like the 360 when devs like Bethesda, Obsidian, etc. started focusing on the console audience to justify their production budgets.
So yeah, the natural conclusion to draw when reports talk about the growth of PC or platforms like Steam, is that the growth comes at the expense of the consoles, and platform holders increasingly pushing their own 1P content to PC can at least in some ways be seen as furthering that shift. And now that's creating an attitude among some PC gamers that, for example, all Sony 1P content should come to the platform and it's not like Sony is doing much to dissuade those assumptions.
It does get pretty annoying though when it's a new PS 1P or even 3P exclusive coming out and you get a gang of people talking about how they can't wait to get it on PC. I wouldn't call it port-begging (I mean, chances are the game IS coming to PC more or less), but some people do it just to spite people buying Day 1 on the console, particularly PlayStation. When you realize that in terms of big or just narrative-heavy games, it's only Sony games getting plot-spoiled (I didn't see any leaks for Plague Tale: Requiem, Gotham Knights, Pentiment etc.) and it's been that way for a few years now, it makes the "can't wait for PC version!" comments when it's JUST the PS4/5 version releasing for some period of time, annoying and in some specific cases probably thinly-veiled plays into console war BS.
But I mainly only see that on places like Twitter, but I've seen it on ResetERA too in the recent FF XVI thread, especially considering how some of those posters lean in other console gaming discussions when they involve say Sony or Microsoft, or the ABK acquisition. Like, they're so easy to see through they might as well be translucent.
Armchair experts disagree with pretty much the entire gaming industry, aside from Nintendo.
Meanwhile, in Japan:
At a glance: A new report has shone light on how the Japanese PC games market is growing, with both revenues and player…
www.gamesindustry.biz
It's true that the market is WIDER to some extent.. but AAA isn't losing money by releasing on PC.
For 3P publishers? Very likely not. It's more about if platform holders are, Sony in this particular case. But that really depends on high conversion of normal Day 1 buyers of 1P titles on console, waiting for the PC port instead before buying, and we haven't seen that happen yet and will probably never see it happen in all honesty.
It's kind of difficult to tell though without a game to use as the control. One of the live-service GaaS titles will be among the first, I guess by comparing what the MTX revenue split looks like between PS consoles and the PC version.
Sony wants a large catalog of games on PC to justify a storefront most likely. The end goal.
They likely want Dualsense to take off as a common controller on PC as well.
I kind of don't see how that pans out strategy-wise when they are bringing the 1P ports to EGS and especially Steam. They are would-be competing storefronts to whatever Sony brings out, and it would be pretty difficult of them to yank future ports away from those storefronts to simply lock them to their own. They have already conditioned PC gamers to expect the ports on other storefronts at the very least.
If Sony are bringing their own storefront/launcher to PC after all, they'll have to provide incentives to drive customers to theirs that won't involve suddenly stripping away ports from EGS & Steam. But I actually kind of think they would enter a partnership with Epic and integrate some PS launcher with EGS, work out a revenue cut deal more advantageous for Sony (in return them putting more investment funds into Epic), and find some ways to incentivize 3P partners on PS consoles to up their support for PC ports to EGS, before doing their own storefront.
Maybe, anyway.
The part of the math people always forget when quoting anectdotes about Playstation gamers switching to PC... there's a world full of PC gamers who aren't current customers to sell to.. and that includes accessories.
Yeah but also consider that you don't need to pay for a Steam account, and you can play free games on Steam plus get games for free and very, VERY cheap in flash sales with bundles, among other things.
The question is still how many hardcore/core Day 1 PS 1P buyers are there who don't have FOMO & have the patience to wait for a PC port, will choose to do so. And how many of THAT segment tend to do all or most of their 3P games, DLC & MTX purchases on PlayStation will move that activity over to PC?
We don't have any answers for that; I personally think those specific customers are maybe 1% to 2% of the total PS customer base, but they could account for generating say 10% of division revenue between 1P & 3P games, DLC, MTX, services purchases for example. We don't really know what that amount is, but I'm guessing Sony have belief that specific type of customer accounts for a bit less than 10% of total division revenue, and they make up differences through having live-service GaaS content generating its own revenue, and other stuff.