All these random remasters are weak excuses to make PC ports. They gave up on their platform for terrible PC sales that make zero profit.
No hype for PlayStation releases anymore, weak PS5 sales every quarter because everything is on PC, there's no rush to get one. They are following Sega and Xbox if they don't reverse course.
Use transmedia and movies to sell your own platform to new customers instead of Steamdeck. Imbeciles.
Transmedia isn't as effective in building IP if that IP is locked to a select userbase.
The best-selling games on the market are multiplatform.
There is value in exclusivity in the right circumstances and then there is value in multiplatform in the right circumstances.
Ghost of Yotei isn't launching on PC Day 1 for a reason. They're still using their AAA IP to push the PlayStation platform, but Ghost of Tsushima has been very successful on PC and will do even better numbers if the movie is a success. The bigger the IP that Ghost is, the more enticing people will be to buy a PS5 or PS5 Pro to play Ghost of Yotei, especially with GTA6 also dropping on PS5 and not PC Day 1.
The biggest problem for Ghost of Yotei is that Ghost of Tsushima (movie) is probably delayed due to the writer strike. We don't even have a cast. This movie is likely coming out in 2026 at this point, maybe even 2027. The writer/actor strike has been terrible for Sony's transmedia strategy.
Anyways, I think people fundamentally don't understand the transmedia strategy and should look closer at TLOU, The Witcher, Cyberpunk, Fallout, and even Gran Turismo to better understand transmedia.
All of these games got massive boosts in sales due to their transmedia, but there are some unique situations to almost all of them.
- TLOU P1 - Rushed PC port, but TLOU P1 sold very well regardless
- The Witcher 3 sold very well and the Netflix show gave it a bump, despite season 1 coming out 4 years after the release of The Witcher 3.
- Cyberpunk also was able to resalvage the brand with the help of the animated series coinciding with improvements to the game's performance and gameplay.
- Fallout has been a huge success on Amazon, but they didn't have any modern games. Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 saw boosts across all platforms, but these were old games and cheap games. This is why Sony puts out remasters, so they can sell them for higher prices.
- Gran Turismo got a massive boost after the movie hit netflix but there was no PC version to gain from this momentum.
One of the outliers that I haven't mentioned is Uncharted. Uncharted didn't really boost the sales of the games much. The movie was a moderate success, but I don't think it made sense to try and get people to jump into Uncharted 4 when the movie pre-dates Uncharted 1. The Witcher is similar, but I think the long form television format helped The Witcher a lot more than a movie would have.
It's a sound strategy.
Those who complain about Sony putting their games on PC ignore that Sony isn't putting their games on Xbox, despite there being fairly big sales potential there. That would have a much larger impact on diluting their console sales, but there is a difference between console and PC gamers. One this board generally refuses to acknowledge. Similarly, putting some games on Switch won't hurt them either.
That being said, I think Sony won't continue to support Steam or Switch long term rather they'll favor their own PC launcher and handheld and that part of the transmedia strategy is to get their IP popular enough to help boost efforts with a PC launcher and a handheld, as well as their console game sales.