Spider-Man 2's Looking Like Another PC Own Goal from Sony | Push Square

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For a firm hellbent on extracting as much profit as possible from PC users, Sony’s not exactly doing a great job of it.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, already a PS5 best-seller, has really struggled since debuting on PC, attracting a peak player count of just 28k on Steam since its launch late last week. That’s less than half the original Marvel’s Spider-Man’s peak player count of 66k, and way down on the likes of Ghost of Tsushima and God of War.

The game’s getting hammered in player reviews, too. Of the roughly 5k appraisals thus far, around half of them are negative, with many pointing to poor optimisation and performance. “[The] game runs like a fat kid through molasses,” said one user who requested a refund.

Outside of the runaway success of Helldivers 2, which launched day and date on PC, the novelty of Sony’s PC ports appears to be declining. Sequels like Horizon Forbidden West and God of War Ragnarok have struggled to match the peaks of their predecessors, and other recent day one releases like Until Dawn and LEGO Horizon Adventures have failed to have any impact at all.

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The Japanese giant, however, appears to be doubling down on the strategy. In response to ferocious feedback from PC players, it recently announced that it’ll make PSN logins optional in single player games, and incentivise the process by offering free content to those who connect their accounts.

Meanwhile, the PS Blog is filled with disgruntled fans who feel the existence of PC ports is devaluing the PS5, as the system has far fewer “true” exclusive games now compared to previous PlayStation platforms.

Sony, in response, has argued that in order to improve the reach of its titles, it needs to release them on PC. The theory is that it can continue to profit from costly software that’s already been successful on PS5, and hopefully pick up new fans along the way.

But even with specialist studio Nixxes on deck, the