Sega have reportedly stated that due to the recent success of sales on Steam, they intend to “aggressively promote” PC ports, and include PC with multi-platform releases.
Games Industry.biz reports that during an investor Q&A Sega stated that repeat sales of their games increased significantly in March and April. This is likely due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and quarantine orders, forcing many to stay at home. Growth slowed in June and July, but sales were still higher than in 2019.
Sega also reportedly noted that Steam was a (in Games Industry.biz’s words) “key platform,” especially in North America and Europe. Atlus launched Persona 4 Golden on Windows PC via Steam on June 13th. Just over a week later, it was revealed the game sold 500,000 copies on the platform.
Sega reportedly note that the game’s sales on PC were “significantly higher than expected,” which in turn has influenced their strategies. “Going forward, we intend to aggressively promote the porting of previously launched titles to Steam and other new platforms. […] Under such direction, we would like to take multi-platform rollout in account and prepare the PC version and others from the start.”
It should be noted that Sega have discussed PC ports in the past [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], becoming more open to PC ports over time. This may be the first time Sega have stated publicly they are interested in a simultaneous PC release.
This would mean games developed under them would consider the PC’s technical specifications during development, rather than a console game later ported to PC.
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Image: Steam
