Just saw God of War for preorder on Steam and I have to ask why you think Sony allowed this. The PS4 is still highly relevant to both consumers and gamedevs. I can only think that making AAA/AAAA games is now so expensive that timed exclusivity is the only sensible way to make an exclusive or they want to get PC users invested in the franchise so they are more likely to buy a PS5 for Ragnarok.
I think that it's important to differentiate the view of a particular game in a franchise from the franchise itself. Sony's view of God of War 2018 as a system seller has changed over time. God of War was originally released for the PS4 in 2018. The PC version isn't scheduled to launch until January of 2022, making a time gap of over three years between releases. This means that the vast majority of people who would consider buying the game for the PS4 have already bought it. Any further sales by bringing the game to PC would primarily be to customers who would not have gotten it for PS4 to begin with.
Remember, [the majority of sales for a game happen within the first three months of launch]. The last content released for God of War 2018 was some one-year anniversary content released in 2019, with avatars and a PS4 theme. The game has been left to gather dust for over two years since then. Any additional PS4 sales it gets nowadays are essentially the last drips and dregs of people finally getting around to it. There just arenāt many more sales that Sony can wring out of God of War 2018 for PS4. Almost everybody who wanted to buy it on that platform has bought it already.Ā
The PC market, on the other hand, still has a lot of potential players who might like the game but don't own a PS4. They are much more likely to give the game a try on the PC they already have, since the barrier to entry has been lowered so much. And, wouldn't you know it, GoW Ragnarok is also coming in 2022 to PS4 and PS5 for these new players who liked the game and want to play the bigger, fancier sequel. Some nonzero number of those PC players are also likely to play GoW 2018, enjoy it thoroughly, and be persuaded to pick up a PS4 or PS5 for GoW Ragnarok later in 2022. Because of this, releasing GoW 2018 on PC serves a dual purpose of selling to a mostly-untapped market (gamers who don't own a PS4 but want to play) and advertising for GoW Ragnarok at the same time.
[Join us on Discord] and/or [Support us on Patreon]
The FANTa Project is being rebooted. [What is the FANTa project?]
Got a burning question you want answered?
Short questions: Ask a Game Dev on Twitter
Long questions: Ask a Game Dev on Tumblr
Frequent Questions: The FAQ
