Ghost of Tsushima's PC port once again proves that PlayStation should do this sort of thing sooner, as player counts soar past every major Sony PC release (except Helldivers 2)
I don't mean to speak for you, dear reader, but I think I can safely say that, if you're a PC gamer, you're probably sodding tired of console exclusives by now—even if (sales-driving wizardry aside) multi-platform launches are increasingly the norm. .
Well, good news: Sony's just had further confirmation that it should keep bringing its titles to PC—as per Steam DB numbers spotted by our friends over at GamesRadar, Ghost of Tsushima has hit an all-time concurrent player peak of 77,500 at the time of writing. That's already beating out Marvel's Spider-Man (66,436), God of War 2018 (73,529) and The Last of Us Part 1 (36,496).
Concurrent player counts aren't everything but, with Sony yet to release any official sales data, they do suggest the publisher has another big PC hit on its hands. The game's success flies in the face of similar PSN sign-up drama to the hullabaloo which tanked Helldivers 2's review scores earlier in the month, though speculation continues to circulate that Sony's been treading lightly, and it's not dodged negative reviews entirely.
If I were to dwell on why this is happening, I might be able to offer an answer—Ghost of Tsushima is a pretty good game and I think a lot of people wanted to play it but couldn't. Sage wisdom, I know.
In all seriousness, this feels like further vindication for Sony's umming-and-ahhing over its PC port strategy—and a good sign that we'll be seeing more day-one ports like the one that doubtless fuelled the stratospheric success of Helldivers 2, which has an all-time peak of… jeez, 458,709. Even with Ghost of Tsushima's stellar numbers, it's still pulling almost 1/6th of Arrowhead's co-op phenome-numbers.
All in all, Ghost of Tsushima feels like another bell rung, tolling the death of console exclusivity—especially as big publishers like Square Enix also giving up the ghost. Whether that'll translate into side-by-side releases, or the annoying one-to-two year wait we've been enduring for games like God of War Ragnarök, remains to be seen. Eternally frustrating as it is for me, it's not as if multi platform development is as simple as snapping your fingers, though.
It is, regrettably, far easier for developers to optimise their games when they know the exact hardware specs their players will be running on—and it is a risk considering how (justifiably) furious we get about cruddy PC ports like the shambling mess of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor last year. That's not to say console players have had it easy with performance, though, and hey—we might as well all suffer together. Still, I'll take the vindication—and signs of hope—where I can. It is known: PC gaming refuses to die.