This week, Kotaku reported that PlayStation 4 exclusive Horizon: Zero Dawn may come to the PC in the near future. And let me first say, it’s interesting this became big news because when Quantic Dream announced that Detroit: Become Human was coming to PC last year—another Sony-published game—it didn’t inspire nearly the same levels of pontificating about Sony’s intentions for the PC.
Of course, people generally praised Horizon: Zero Dawn and disliked Detroit. Maybe that’s the only difference, that Horizon is seen as one of Sony’s “prestige” games.
It does have me thinking about the PC though, and specifically about the PC as an arm of Microsoft—because that’s what it’s become to some people. The PC is seen as an extension of the Xbox platform, or perhaps the Xbox is an extension of the PC. Hell, I even wrote that the Xbox Series X “sure does resemble a PC tower” when Microsoft teased it at December’s Game Awards.
Xbox Series XMicrosoft
And it’s fascinating how times have changed. Only a little over a decade ago, Games for Windows Live seemed like a colossal overreach. Microsoft’s first attempt to wed PC and Xbox manifested as a buggy launcher with buggy authorization and buggy multiplayer functionality and it sucked. It wreaked havoc on the PC, and continues to do damage even today. Just this month Rockstar pulled Grand Theft Auto IV from Steam, citing a lack of Games for Windows Live keys as the reason.