When Sony announced that Horizon Zero Dawn would be coming to PC in March 2020, it buried the news in the second paragraph of an interview with PlayStation global studios director Hermen Hulst. Sony wasn't yelling about its new PC support; in fact, it seemed so sensitive to potentially strong reactions from its user base that people had to go looking for the ad. "And to reassure us, releasing a AAA first game title on PC doesn't necessarily mean all games are coming to PC now," Hulst said. "In my opinion, Horizon Zero Dawn was a good choice in this particular case." Unlike Microsoft, which has unveiled every one of its Xbox One exclusive games for PC since 2016, Hulst confirmed that there are no day-and-date release plans for PC. It is logical. It is clearly recommended that Microsoft publish its games on Windows 10 and the console simultaneously. Among them is Xbox Game Pass for PC, a personalized service for PC gamers that offers many games just for PC. Bringing people into this ecosystem, by spending monthly fees to access a variety of games, is an important part of Xbox's strategy. Sony does have PlayStation Now for PC, but it's a streaming-based service. Horizon will be a full PC port. Sony doesn't have the same incentive to release their games simultaneously as Microsoft does, so it probably won't ever happen. He mainly makes games to sell PlayStation equipment. Instead, experience is likely related to sales and player reaction. As Hulst says, Horizon, with a combat system that relies on the precise use of a bow and arrow, seems like a good fit for PC, especially when you think about the potential of mouse and keyboard control and how amazing it will be. the game over 30 fps. "PlayStation PC games are a betrayal for people who support PlayStation from PS1. There is no reason to buy a console anymore," one Twitter user said in response to the news. In all honesty though, the reaction wasn't over the top unless you were looking for bad catches in the usual unreasonable corners of the internet. That's because it's hard to see a downside to this PS4-exclusive leap onto PC three years after the fact. It actually seems like a pretty good compromise. Horizon Zero Dawn has dropped so often on the PlayStation Store since its release that anyone who's ever wanted to play it on PS4 has gotten the chance. The value of being exclusive has been preserved, and the game has probably done its job helping to sell consoles, given that 10 million copies of Horizon have been moved.
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(Image credit: 505 Games) It's not the only PlayStation game to prove that either. Death Stranding, a PS4 game released by Sony but developed independently, comes to PC on July 14. The Quantic games Dream Detroit: Becoming Human, Heavy Rain, and Beyond: Two Souls have also been released for PC, having previously been exclusive to PlayStation. Sony doesn't have much to lose by bringing its PS4 games to PC. You should do the same for your PS5-exclusive games. This process does not need to be rushed; if it takes years to get there, due to public sensitivity, then that's too bad. If the end result is a great PC port with detailed graphics settings, and the game has already sold a ton of consoles, why not? For Sony, it's another way to monetize big-budget games designed to sell dedicated hardware. Horizon Zero Dawn on PC sounds like an experience, but hopefully it's the start of something. For PC gamers, this sounds like the continuation of a long-standing trend.
When console classics hit PC
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(Image credit: SEGA) Over the past decade, PC gamers have had the chance to see many console classics making their way to Steam and other services. In many cases too, it took a long wait for these games to arrive. The Yakuza series, for example, started on PS2 in 2005 and finally came to PC in August 2018 from Yakuza 0. We saw plenty of ports of late PC console games, from Final Fantasy 15 to Vanquish to Metal Gear Rising Vengeance. More recently, of course, we've seen Halo: Master Chief Collection bring a payload of classic FPS titles to PC. Most third-party publishers now publish games on PC and consoles simultaneously, though this hasn't always been the case. For PC gamers, it's been exciting to see this trend emerge. At the start of the last console generation, before Microsoft committed to bringing extended backwards compatibility to Xbox One, it seemed that the two manufacturers had lost interest in letting gamers port their old games over to new hardware. That meant PC gaming was the way to go if you wanted to buy a game and be more or less sure you'd be able to play it in 10 years. Backward compatibility seems more important at the start of the PS5 and Xbox Series X generation, the two consoles supporting it to different degrees. But the value of adding classic console games to your Steam library hasn't diminished. That's why it's so innovative to see a PlayStation exclusive game on PC, even if it's years old. And that's why Sony should incorporate PC versions into its future plans for PS4 and PS5 titles, even if they don't come out simultaneously: the excitement of seeing console classics on PC will never go away.