Sony PlayStation cross-platform game strategy

So, as some of us speculated when Nixxes was acquired, it appears they are mostly being tasked with helping port PlayStation exclusives to PC. Not surprising as porting console titles to PC was their specialty pre-acquisition.

I do wonder if that's been their sole focus since the acquisition or if they're also doing other things.

Regards,
SB
 
Silent_Buddha said:
So, as some of us speculated when Nixxes was acquired, it appears they are mostly being tasked with helping port PlayStation exclusives to PC. Not surprising as porting console titles to PC was their specialty pre-acquisition.

I do wonder if that's been their sole focus since the acquisition or if they're also doing other things.
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Sony are reported as having said as much. But it'll be slow going if it's just them, since 2016 they have worked on and released PC ports. Good ports take time and the Spider-Man games are worthy of good ports!
 
I've never really been a fan of sony's first party output but I have to say I will go and try some of them now that the cost of entry for me is just the price of the game. I picked up horizon since it was $25 on steam this weekend and while there are some faults with it , its a good game. Glad I can pick up other games to try out as they become avalible.
It also seems like the release time line is getting smaller
 
DSoup said:
Two months?
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It releases in August this year, two months from now.

DSoup said:
But it'll be slow going if it's just them, since 2016 they have worked on and released PC ports.
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It's obvious it's not just them, since 2022 there has been God Of War port, Uncharted 4 and Legacy of Thieves ports, and now Spider Man and Miles Morales ports, Sony is accelerating the pace now that they have Nixxes.
 
DSoup said:
Sony are reported as having said as much. But it'll be slow going if it's just them, since 2016 they have worked on and released PC ports. Good ports take time and the Spider-Man games are worthy of good ports!
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True for older titles prior to Nixxes being acquired. Looks like it's taken approximately 1 year (a little more if they immediately started working on Spiderman once the acquisition completed). As well Spider-Man: Miles Morales is also coming out this fall on PC. So either they have another studio working on that or Nixxes has been working on both simultaneously. It's probably the latter since they're using the same engine.

However, now that they are part of Sony, it depends on Sony's plans WRT PC ports. Nixxes could have the PC port ready for future titles day and date with the PS5 launch of a title (similar to how they operated with Square-Enix) if that's what Sony wanted. How many titles would Nixxes be able to work on simultaneously in that situation? With a small team? A larger team? Who knows? :)

Regards,
SB
 
Silent_Buddha said:
However, now that they are part of Sony, it depends on Sony's plans WRT PC ports. Nixxes could have the PC port ready for future titles day and date with the PS5 launch of a title (similar to how they operated with Square-Enix) if that's what Sony wanted. How many titles would Nixxes be able to work on simultaneously in that situation? With a small team? A larger team? Who knows? :)
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It's an interesting one. When you look at the release cadence of Nixxes and Bluepoint it's clear they can port games fairly quickly but porting completed games is much quicker. This has been explained in various tech interviews (Uncharted, God of War, Shadow of the Colossus etc) but much of it is that when working with the finished project you save on not expending effort not trying to keep pace with tech/design iterations that subsequently get canned.

I guess it depends on how much Sony expect from the resource they have available. Unlike Microsoft, Sony seem really keen to keep their business in the black (i.e. demonstrably profitable) and aren't firing money in all directions from their money-cannon. If I were Sony, I would want to be seeing a lot more sales on these PC releases before committing day-and-date dual-platform development. I think Spider-Man will be key and its success (or not) will influence Sony's PC strategy going forward.
 
DSoup said:
I guess it depends on how much Sony expect from the resource they have available. Unlike Microsoft, Sony seem really keen to keep their business in the black (i.e. demonstrably profitable) and aren't firing money in all directions from their money-cannon. If I were Sony, I would want to be seeing a lot more sales on these PC releases before committing day-and-date dual-platform development. I think Spider-Man will be key and its success (or not) will influence Sony's PC strategy going forward.
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So far, I'm not seeing much difference between how Sony are handling the question of support for PC versus how Microsoft were handling support of PC a few years ago.

MS also didn't immediately jump to offering all titles on PC nor did they immediately jump on offering all titles day and date on PC initially. The one major difference that I see so far is that for the most part the developer that made the Xbox version of the game was also in charge of making the PC port of the game (there were some exceptions, I think). So, for example, Turn 10 handled the PC port of Forza after they did work porting the engine with the FM PC experiment they did a few years before FM7.

Sony on the other hand thus far has mostly relied on 3rd parties to the ports of their titles to PC (there might be exceptions I'm not aware of).

I'd put that difference down to the fact that MS owns the Windows environment so there's likely more resources there that MS game developers can tap into WRT initial efforts to port their engines to PC.

Otherwise, how Sony has approached it has been remarkably similar to how MS originally approached it during the XBO generation. First make sure it's profitable and that it doesn't negatively impact the core console business ... then take the next step. Rinse and repeat with each step.

Regards,
SB
 
Silent_Buddha said:
So far, I'm not seeing much difference between how Sony are handling the question of support for PC versus how Microsoft were handling support of PC a few years ago.

...

Sony on the other hand thus far has mostly relied on 3rd parties to the ports of their titles to PC (there might be exceptions I'm not aware of).
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This is obviously the big one. I would argue, strongly, that with the exception of Insomniac, many of Sony's first party developers are already taking way too long to bring new games to market and embedding multiplatform development for all - or key - titles is not going to help that. If you're going slow your release cadence to accommodate dual-platform development, there had better be a cost reason for doing so. Introducing change to speed up development on console and having a team of experienced speed ports to bring it to PC soon after, is likely going to be more cost effective in the near-middle future unless PC sales really explode, but all evidence is they are a tiny fraction of what the games sell on console. That split might adjust for people who own both a PlayStation and PC.

I also wonder if Spider-Man 2 would sell more overall if released on PS5 and PC simultaneously compared to getting it out quicker for PS5 then porting it to PC shortly after? And what are the cost implications for development? I.e. maybe it is more cost effective to have a larger time take more time, than existing-sized teams working solely on console compared to satellite porting teams. There's a lot of numbers that matter that nobody apart from Sony have any visibility of.
 
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DSoup said:
I also wonder if Man 2 sell more overall if released on PS5 and PC simultaneously compared to getting it out quicker for PS5 then porting it to PC shortly after? And what are the cost implications for development? I.e. maybe it is more cost effective to have a larger time take more time, than existing-sized teams working solely on console compared to satellite porting teams. There's a lot of numbers that matter that nobody apart from Sony have any visibility of.
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Yeah, it'd be fantastic if we had access to the numbers that MS and Sony have/had during each step of the process. Unfortunately, I don't think either will be generous enough to release that data to the public. :)

Regards,
SB
 
DSoup said:
Introducing change to speed up development on console and having a team of experienced speed ports to bring it to PC soon after, is likely going to be more cost effective in the near-middle future unless PC sales really explode, but all evidence is they are a tiny fraction of what the games sell on console. That split might adjust for people who own both a PlayStation and PC.
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Day and date on both PS/PC then the numbers would be different, the gap wouldnt be as wide. Though i too think that the PS will see the games first, then somewhat later on the PC using porting process in the case of Sony atleast for now.
 
so this and spiderman will be the first game from nixxes after they were absorbed to sony?

pjbliverpool said:
although I need to start playing games much faster to make space in my queue for it.
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indeed! dont be like me, lots of games left unplayed or just played for ~15 minutes. but unable to ask for a refund in good conscience...
 
Mskx said:
Hmm... If this is going to be policy for them going forward then my guess is Sony is either going to start their own PC Digital Distribution service or a real team up with one of the big existing ones.
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I would be up for Sony's PC digital store if this enabled PSVR2 to easily run on PC. They could then publish not only PC games but also VR games.

But chances for all of this are minimal. Most likely they will just stick with Steam and EGS.

pjbliverpool said:
That means part 2 will pretty certainly be coming to PC too.
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I would not be surprised if TLOU2 gets some "directors cut" next year [PC port too!]. Basic PS4 version of TLOU2 is down to $40 regular price, and that's a big no-no! Got to get that up to 80€! T_T
 
DieH@rd said:
I would not be surprised if TLOU2 gets some "directors cut" next year [PC port too!]. Basic PS4 version of TLOU2 is down to $40 regular price, and that's a big no-no! Got to get that up to 80€! T_T
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I think Sony will closely watch how the first game does. What makes The Last of Us a less certain commercial success is that there are already dozens, if not hundreds, or third person crafting, action-exploration, post-apocalyptic, shoot-the-zombie games. It's a very saturated genre.
 
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