With its current excessive profile PC releases of previously unique video games like God of Battle and Horizon Zero Daybreak, Sony appears to be making a shift to advertising and marketing its online game arm as a hybrid console-PC firm. Now, newly knowledgemined recordsdata pointing to a PlayStation PC recreation launcher may imply the corporate desires to ape Xbox in bridging to the computer-based market.

Within the days following launch, dataminers discovered recordsdata that referenced a “PlayStation PC Launcher” in Sony’s newest port of Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, VGC experiences. The publication says it has confirmed and verified the recordsdata in query, although Gizmodo has not been in a position to independently confirm them. Nevertheless, this follows on the heels of clues popping out of an online (pun meant) of recordsdata conspicuously left inside Sony’s newest port that confirmed the corporate could let customers hyperlink their PlayStation Community accounts to their PC video games.

It’s nonetheless up within the air whether or not this implies Sony desires to create its personal PC launcher/retailer web page, then make its video games unique to that platform. After all, customers completely “love” loading up a recreation on Steam or the Epic Retailer solely to have that time to one other, sluggish launcher, so we hope the corporate will be taught from others’ failures. Sony additionally has lots of floor to cowl in comparison with the competitors. Microsoft is already far forward of Sony with its PC-Xbox Reside account integration.

It’s clear that there’s an viewers for PlayStation unique video games in the PC market, and the corporate is making its ambitions clear with its personal PlayStation for PC web page. Sony’s God of Battle and Horizon Zero Daybreak each proved to be high sellers on the platform. The corporate confirmed again in Might that, in simply two months, the previous bought round 971,000 items within the two or so months it’s been accessible. In the meantime, the latter has bought just below 2.4 million copies over the previous yr and a half. Sony additionally expects gross sales of its PC titles to exceed $300 million this yr. The corporate apparently desires half of its recreation library on PC by 2025.

And if concurrent gamers are any indication, Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered is already an enormous hit, with round 66,000 gamers swinging across the streets of Manhattan throughout peak play time on Sunday.

That said, the number of Sony-exclusive games re-released on PC is minimal compared to its competitors, with only six first-party games available on both Steam and Epic Store. Any new launcher would need to also integrate third-party games to make it worthwhile, although it’s possible that Sony could add some depth to a PC launcher by integrating Playstation Plus’ Xbox Game Pass-like features into it. 

It may be a way for the company that’s been hard pressed to produce enough PS5s to meet demand to actually create buzz for its exclusive content. The company has said it wants to quickly improve manufacturing this yr, however a transfer to PC ports will nonetheless make its video games much more accessible.

Executives have mentioned that by increasing onto PC, they’ll go from getting access to a “very slender” section of gamers to a a lot bigger one. Properly, no duh. It’s unusual how lengthy Sony has resisted permitting PC players entry to the corporate’s library. Possibly that’s due to how deeply entrenched Microsoft, its chief rival within the gaming console area, is in PCs. Final yr, Jim Ryan—Sony Interactive’s CEO— advised GQ that whereas the price of making video games has gone up, “our ease of creating it [exclusive games] accessible to non-console house owners has grown.”