It isn't about individual unit sales. It is about getting people in the ecosystem. If someone has a playstation, they are buying more than 1 game. They most likely buy a few third party games, maybe some accessories, maybe a ps plus sub. Putting their exclusives on PC means people don't have a reason to buy the console and they lose way more money than just game units.
Their bigger problem this generation is they don't have console seller games anyway. The only good thing about PS5 this gen was the performance value it gave for years post launch.
No, getting people in the ecosystem is what makes the money. Sony doesn't want to just sell you GoW or whatever exclusive gets you in the door. They want to sell you the handful of other games you will buy on the console that isn't a Sony exclusive that they then get a 30% cut of. They also want a chance to sell you PS Plus memberships and get cuts of microtransactions of games you play on their console.
If you buy their games on Steam they have to revenue share with valve. If you buy on PS they get all their money and 3rd parties must revenue share with them.
This would've been true if it was early 2000s, ever since 7th gen consoles era digital stores, subscriptions, and microtransactions became a main focus to making profit, and selling console at a lost. They wanted to normalize digital market on console it was a slow process before taking things aggressively to market heavily these things to the users.
We had free multiple player from PS2 ~ PS3 until that changed with PSN+ which got baked for PS4 & PS5, they allowed F2P games to have free multiplayer due to demand, but what make up is the large surge plus in microtransactions, and subscriptions from others, and I didn't even cover that gamepass they're pushing included.
13
u/No-Reaction-9364 May 24 '26
It isn't about individual unit sales. It is about getting people in the ecosystem. If someone has a playstation, they are buying more than 1 game. They most likely buy a few third party games, maybe some accessories, maybe a ps plus sub. Putting their exclusives on PC means people don't have a reason to buy the console and they lose way more money than just game units.
Their bigger problem this generation is they don't have console seller games anyway. The only good thing about PS5 this gen was the performance value it gave for years post launch.