Ghost of Tsushima brings PS exclusives back to the top of Steam charts, but nothing has reached the heights of God of War
The Steam launch of Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut is something of a return to form for Sony's first-party games, but it's not breaking any records.
The latest Sony first-party release to make the jump from PlayStation to PC is Ghost of Tsushima. The Director’s Cut version of the game arrived on Steam and the Epic Games Store overnight to a very positive reception from players.
The PC port doesn’t appear to have any major issues, and by most accounts, the game runs well on a variety of configurations. But what about player turnout? Well, it’s good, but still falls below a certain release from 2022.
Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut is the 12th PlayStation first-party game to leave the confines of the console. Sony’s initiative to bring more of its games to PC started off with Days Gone in 2021, followed by the God of War 2018 reboot, which released on PC in 2022. Since then, the platform holder has been steadily putting more and more of its games out on PC.
Surprisingly, however, player numbers have not always kept up with this increase in output. Excluding Helldivers 2 - God of War remains Sony’s most played first-party game on Steam, peaking at 73,529 concurrent players at launch.
Several games have been released on Steam since, such as Returnal, Spider-Man Remastered, The Last of Us Part 1, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, and the Horizon games. The closest a game has gotten to dethroning God of War has been, unsurprisingly, Spider-Man Remastered, which peaked at 66,436 concurrent players.
Tsushima currently sits below Spider-Man Remastered, making it the third most played game (not including Helldivers 2), with a peak of 57,934 concurrent players. Out of all of those games, Tsushima is the only one with a meaningful multiplayer component, so it should be positioned to do better than this.
However, Sony’s recent PSN account-linking fumble with Helldivers 2 has resulted in Ghost of Tsushima also being unavailable for purchase in over 170 countries and regions, meaning Sony has lost out on a lot of interest and sales from players in those places. Figures could always improve over the weekend, or after Sony puts it back on sale in more countries, but it must be disheartening for developers to see so many players miss out on what’s ultimately a predominantly single-player game because they couldn’t access a side mode that requires a PSN account.
We’ll keep you updated if the situation changes over the coming days.