Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered is the latest Playstation Studios title to be ported to PC, and it seems like the PC games strategy at Sony is working exactly as intended. By porting best-selling PlayStation games to PC whose console sales have pretty much plateaued, the “new” release reaches a new audience and Spider-Man was the latest of games to demonstrate this last month.
The strategy of success of Marvel’s Spider-Man on PS4, PS5, and PC
Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered was released on PC on August 12. While figures are not available from Epic Games Store, Spider-Man was the best-selling game on Steam globally for the week of Aug 9-16, falling second only to sales of the Steam Deck. The game remains in the top 40 best-selling Steam games globally at the time of writing. According to NPD data, Spider-Man was the third best-selling game in the US for August, climbing a massive 81 places from #84 in the chart the previous month, an impressive performance for a game that recently celebrated its 4th anniversary.
It’s not just Spider-Man. Here’s how four PlayStation games shot up the U.S. sales charts when they were ported to PC
Chart by Axios’ @tblysik https://t.co/owk2s3K8WD pic.twitter.com/doQ4N2i7qQ
— Stephen Totilo (@stephentotilo) September 22, 2022
Spider-Man isn’t the only game to demonstrate this either. In a chart compiled by Axios’ Tory Lysik (thanks Stephen Totilo), Horizon Zero Dawn had a similar leap back in August 2020 when it climbed 77 places to #12. God of War managed to climb 141 places to #5 upon its PC release in January, while Days Gone had the most impressive climb of 227 places to #20 in May 2021.
Head of PlayStation Studios Hermen Hulst had already made clear that the strategy at Sony was to port their games like Spider-Man to PC so that they could “reach new gamers who haven’t yet experienced the great stories, characters, and worlds that we’ve built.” All four games have clearly received that second chance at reaching a new gaming audience with their release on PC, bringing new players into the world of PlayStation games without harming sales on the PS5 or PS4, exactly what Sony set out to achieve. The trend will also surely continue with Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection when it is released on PC next month and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales upon its fall PC release.
In other news, Sly Cooper is celebrating his 20th anniversary with new merchandise but no new game. Elsewhere, Call of Duty Warzone 2.0 will add triple circle collapse modes.