Santa Monica Studio’s announcement that it plans to port its beloved 2018God of Warto PC is a significant step in Sony’s continued exploration of the platform. With 2022 still being a decent time away, the publisher has already loaded the year with a number of exciting high profile releases. Kratos' Norse mythology-inspired adventure will take its first tentative steps outside of the PlayStation ecosystem in January, with Naughty Dog’s PC port ofUncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collectionscheduled to follow sometime later in the year.
Both of these PlayStation PC ports can attribute their existence in-part to the groundwork that Guerrilla Games’Horizon Zero Dawnlaid when it launched on the platform back in August 2020. While the release of Aloy’s open-world robot hunting adventure proved definitively that Sony’s IPs could thrive within the PC environment, the game launched with a number of noticeable and unfortunate issues. With Santa Monica Studio’sGod of Warbeing the next game to take the same voyage, there’s some historical lessons that the studio needs to be aware of.
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Horizon’s Troubled PC Launch
Even though Sony has been involved with the porting ofseveral of its IPs to PCin the past,Horizon Zero Dawnwas the first to make its way to the platform from a PlayStation first-party studio. Considering Guerrilla Games, which has traditionally developed games for an enclosed ecosystem, it isn’t particularly surprising that Aloy’s adventure launched with a number of rough edges. Having made history in a lot of ways, the studio has subsequently exposed a lot of potential stumbling blocks for Santa Monica Studio to keep in mind as it works on itsGod of WarPC release.
At launch the complaints thatled toHorizon Zero Dawnbeing review bombed on Steam, often centered primarily around poor optimization, GPU-based performance issues, and a poor overall user experience that was below the standard that Sony’s first party studios are known for. Not only were startup issues some of the most common occurrences for many players, those that found themselves in the actual game often reported a number of frame rate hang-ups.
In terms of the graphical side of things, features like Anisotropic Filtering and HDR simply failing to work ensured that the situation wasn’t much better there either. Perhaps most curiously of all, whenever players attempted to launch the game in 4K,Horizon Zero Dawnwould downscale itself to 1080p before quickly upscaling to 2160p for good measure as well.
Over the year or so sinceHorizon Zero Dawnlaunched on PC, the situation has noticeably improved. While still far from perfect, a number of patches have resulted in the game now being in a much more playable state. Examining the issues that Guerrilla ran into whilst trying to port its game to the platform, it becomes apparent that the fact it was designed initially around a 30 FPS experience on PS4 severely held back development.
The release of a patch forGod of Warearlier this year, which improved the game’s performance on PS5, should make the task of avoiding similar problems a lot more straightforward for Santa Monica Studio. Being cousins within the same PlayStation Studios family will likely ensure that knowledge regarding the methods that Guerrilla employed to fix its own game, will be easily accessible for Santa Monica Studio as well.
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PlayStation’s PC Plan
Since Sony took its first fledgling steps into the business of releasing its older software on PC, a number of important developments have happened behind the scenes within the PlayStation ecosystem that also bode well for theGod of Warport. Earlier this year,Bend Studio’s apocalyptic open-world gameDays Gonebecame the second first-party title to make its way over to the platform.
While crashes were initially a reported nuisance that some players ran into there as well, the fact that the game was made in Unreal Engine 4 ensured that the experience was overall much smoother thanHorizon’s troubled debut. Considering the number of releases Santa Monica Studio can draw lessons from has doubled, it should subsequently provide the studio with even more data that it can apply to development, to avoid running into similar problems.
In the aftermath ofHorizon Zero Dawn’s PC debut, the publisher has also made a much bigger overall commitment to supporting the platform, which should improve the quality of all its future PC ports. Even though it doesn’t mean players should expect day-and-date launches on PC and PS5 for any of Sony’s singleplayer adventures anytime soon,the acquisition of Nixxes is tellingfor the future of PlayStation.
Bringing an experienced studio in-house, that has ample experience porting the likes of Square Enix’sTomb Raidergames to PC, opens up a wealth of talent for the likes of Santa Monica Studio to call upon. While there’s no signs at present that the Dutch studio is actively helping to portGod of War, the nature of Sony’s first party structure ensures that helpful discussions and the sharing of advice should be something that’s on the table if needed.
God of War’s PC Potential
As it stands right now, 2018’sGod of Waris Sony’s second most successful first party title ever, having sold roughly 19 million copies on PS4 alone. With Naughty Dog’sThe Last of Usonly one million sales ahead of it, there’s a lot of competitive-yet-friendly incentive forSanta Monica Studio to launch its PC portin the best possible state.
Having run into several of the same problems whilst bringingHorizon Zero DawnandDays Goneto PC, there’s no doubt a goal within Sony that it has to get the next port right, simply to safeguard the continued success of the new PC initiative. With the publisher having arrived to the metaphorical party late in comparison to Microsoft’s own porting efforts, the desire to show its IPs off in a good light will likely be a factor that benefits theGod of Warport as well.
Following theannouncement ofGod of War’s PC portearlier this week, there’s already been a handful of hints from Santa Monica Studio that suggest it’s fully conscious of the issues thatHorizon Zero Dawnran into. Unlocked frame rates, true 4K visuals, and a host of preset graphical options that allow players to tailor the experience for their own needs, are all features that have been teased.
What’s more, thanks to a partnership with Nvidia, the game will also launch with DLSS support, something that was absent from both of Sony’s previous ports. While the tricky nature of PC development might still end up catching the studio out, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest players should be optimistic about Kratos and Atreus' upcoming adventure on PC.
