Ex-Sony Exec Says PC Ports of Old PS5 Games Are Almost Like Printing Money

Maybe this is how the consoles die. Do they really make that much on hardware?

I’m guessing they make their money on taking a percentage from each game sold on their hardware.

I wonder if we will see the end of PlayStation at some point as people transition to things like the steamdeck.

It has all the benefits of pcgaming and can really just be interacted with like a console.

The steam deck is the best thing to happen to gaming in a long time. My partner and I fight over it because we only have one. It actually got me back into gaming in general for the first time in years. I have a ps5 and an Xbox series s and a switch but i hadn't played in years until the steam deck. I really believe that the steam deck and things like it will change the way games are made. Its wild stuff.
- I think it already has. Basically every modern game works in it. The iGPU is good but some games don’t look great, but the fact that these games will at least be playable is amazing.
  
  I’m playing showed now and it runs and looks great. Of course it’s far from what a modern dgpu can make it look like, but I’m never gaming at a desk again.

I hope it continues that way. I've seen some recent news on the idea that games always looking bigger and better doesn't actually make better games or even make people want to play. I think that's illustrated by the success of the steam deck.

The other part of it is that it makes steam approachable to people who otherwise would never think about a gaming PC. A few weeks ago, my partner could not have told me what steam was. Now, she takes my deck to play baldurs gate. The ease of access, price, and versatility can not be overstated. She literally said its her favourite piece of tech, which is a strange compliment from someone like her. She hasn't touched her switch since. She told me I can play stardew while she plays baldurs gate.

"Old PS5 games"
PS5 is a 4 year old console

Right, but most PS5 games are PS4 games.
I remember gaming in the 80s and 90s, and four-year-old games were regarded as ancient. Times have really changed.

No shit. If you artificially limit your customer base... and then open up.

Imagine how much money they would print if you released the new ones on PC too

This is why Microsoft doesn't care about exclusivity anymore. Consoles were sold at a loss to sell software, but if you can sell your software anywhere, you're ahead of the game.

Microsoft also has the benefit of owning Windows.

Personally, I just just hook up my PC to my TV, run Steam in Big Picture mode, and it gives me a console experience. Not a perfect console experience, mind you, but good enough for me.
- The only thing that doesn't make it perfect for me is the fact that so many games running on PC, even if they have a console version, don't have UI scaling options to make anything readable at TV distance.

"Old" PS5 games

I’m just waiting for them to release Bloodborne on PC. Everybody says it’s great, but I ain’t going to buy a PlayStation console just for one game.

It runs pretty well on emulator, if you don't mind donning the tricorne.
It is the only fromsoft game I have hated. I have no idea where the love comes from
- The love comes from the fact that it is a masterpiece. I have no idea where the hate comes from.
  
  You're entitled to your opinion of course, but the game you describe in your next comment is not the Bloodborne I have spent an ungodly amount of time playing and helping others to get through.
  
  I've had difficulty getting started with Souls games before, Sekiro took me like 5 or 6 years to git gud after starting and quitting in frustration half a dozen times. Bloodborne failed to hook me the first couple times, but once I got it I was completely hooked.
  
  But weapon design, drip, environment, story, all these things are practically unrivalled by any game. Gameplay is maybe second to Sekiro and Elden ring, and Bloodborne being locked at 30 fps is pure pain. There is nothing like the trick weapon system that makes each weapon practically a completely unique gaming experience, with almost all weapons being both viable and fun to play with. Elden ring and ds3 for example just have buckets of garbage weapons. Bloodborne has like maybe 1 objectively bad weapon, and a couple that are strong but kinda boring, and maybe a few that are fun but underpowered in higher ng+ cycles.
  
  Still bust this out around Halloween and help new players through the game for a few weeks every year.

And it only took 15 years for them to realize that. Bravo!

Imagine if you released your entire fucking thirty year old library.

PS4 and PS5 games are much easier to port to PC since those consoles are essentially PC hardware.

Older games need to be rebuilt for completely different hardware, so it's actually a lot more work. Not to say it wouldn't be nice, but it's not as easy and may not be worth the money, and there is less interest for a lot of that stuff.
- To be fair to at least ps2/x games, there would probably be nothing stopping them from taking something like one of the popular open source emulators, shutting them down, and then hiring anyone they can from the project to work on an official emulator on their end that allows you to play the games on PC in an official manner. Or at least if you purchase individual titles.
  
  But like you said, probably not worth the time or money.
- Old enough games can be emulated and run just fine. There's already emulators for everything, Sony could build their own and just embed the game inside and it wouldn't be much bigger than most other games.
  
  I think it has more to do with license than technical issues.
I would love if they brought the Jak & Daxter and Sky Cooper games to PC. Along with the entire Infamous series while we're at it.
- Good news! There's a community open source project to port the engine used in Jak and Daxter to PC.
  
  https://opengoal.dev/
  
  Looks like the first two games are mostly playable, with their efforts focused on getting Jak 3 working now.