Uncharted looks like Sony's weakest 2022 PC game launch

[Daniel Sims]

The big picture: Among the several former PlayStation exclusives that Sony brought to PC this year, signs indicate Naughty Dog's last two Uncharted games are experiencing the lowest player numbers. Whatever factors impacted the release, Uncharted's performance could influence Sony's PC port strategy.

The Uncharted: Legacy of Thieve's Collection PC port seems to have peaked with a fraction of the number of players as other Sony titles on Steam. The primary cause behind the lukewarm launch is unclear, but multiple factors worked against it.

The bundle, including Uncharted 4: A Thief's End and the standalone expansion Uncharted: Lost Legacy, hit a peak of just under 11,000 players, according to SteamDB. Days Gone did more than double that, while other former PlayStation exclusives at least quintupled the Uncharted figures. Uncharted also failed to crack the top 100 titles on Steam.

Horizon Zero Dawn peaked at over 56,000 players, while Spider-Man Remastered did somewhere north of 66,000, and God of War almost hit 75,000. SteamDB's numbers are only rough estimates, but they show a sharp decline for Uncharted. Sony's PC games are also available on the Epic Games Store, but there's no reason to believe that Uncharted alone would get a higher proportion of sales from that storefront.

Uncharted's biggest problem likely boils down to timing. Sony and Iron Galaxy released the title against Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, A Plague Tale: Requiem, and Gotham Knights. Meanwhile, Sony released its other PC ports in quieter periods of the year.

Compounding the problem is the game's age. Uncharted 4 is the oldest title Sony has brought to PC, initially launched on PlayStation 4 in 2016. The PS5 edition of Legacy of Thieves came out in January this year, but a six-year-old game may still see headwinds when migrating to a new platform.

Many prospective PC players are likely concerned they may feel lost starting a franchise with its fourth entry. God of War is a soft reboot and stands apart from its earlier games, but Uncharted 4 follows three other entries that aren't available on PC. Sony's other PC releases are also mostly either standalone titles or inaugural entries in their respective series.

Perhaps releasing a PC port of Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection — the set that brought the original PlayStation 3 trilogy to the PS4 — could help bring more players aboard. However, the performance of Legacy of Thieves Collection could put Sony off reaching further back in time.

It's not all about age, though. One of the most requested Sony PC conversions is 2015's Bloodborne. The PS4 remake of Shadow of the Colossus might also do well on PC.

Sony confirmed its next PC exports include Sackboy: A Big Adventure on October 27 and Spider-Man: Miles Morales coming November 18. Leaks also indicate a PC version of the award-winning Returnal may be imminent.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/96430-uncharted-looks-like-sony-weakest-2022-pc-game.html

 

[phenomx8]

Beside that the PC version also lack some refinement compared to PS5 version. The one that struck me is the DLSS didnt give any performance boost over native, at least for me personally. But to be honest, Im enjoying this game much better than God Of War, the flow, the action, the drama , all become one unity of AAA experience that I dont think any other than Sony will to pull. Even Tomb Raider series, the closest to this style of game , still pretty far away

 

[m4a4]

It skips the first 3 games in the franchise.

If I'm playing a remake of a series, I'm going to start from the beginning.

Otherwise, I'm going to spend my money on other games. I can wait.

 

[passwordistaco]

It skips the first 3 games in the franchise.

If I'm playing a remake of a series, I'm going to start from the beginning.

Otherwise, I'm going to spend my money on other games. I can wait.

Yep. PC gamers have been hearing how good Uncharted is for years. We don't want to jump in at the end, we want to play through the series. If you've never played Mass Effect, which one are you playing first? If you've never seen the Lord of the Rings movies, which are you going to watch first?

 

[asifmunir]

The single biggest reason is the lack of support for processors without axv2 Instructions... This requirement wasn't clear on the game's system requirements. Alot of users can't simply run the game. Just like me. I bought the game but my 3rd gen i5 can't run it. Even though I have played GoW, spiderman, days gone and horizon without any issue. This is quite confusing on so many levels.

 

[phenomx8]

It skips the first 3 games in the franchise.

If I'm playing a remake of a series, I'm going to start from the beginning.

Otherwise, I'm going to spend my money on other games. I can wait.

Uncharted 4 in my opinion quite contained in story term because its co starring new character in the series that never mentioned before (Sam), so I didnt feel like Im lose something when playing. But thats just me, though ...

 

[m4a4]

Uncharted 4 in my opinion quite contained in story term because its co starring new character in the series that never mentioned before (Sam), so I didnt feel like Im lose something when playing. But thats just me, though ...

The other problem is that I actually have played 4 already (borrowed it looong ago). Decent story, but I do remember it had a few callbacks to previous game events.
And a gawd awful shooting system with controller. I turned on the auto-aim pretty quickly with that one. Hopefully PC has a more bearable 3rd person shooting experience.

 

[kira setsu]

Gawdda**it!

there goes the original trilogy coming to pc, that blows.

 

[DZillaXx]

While the games are great the first go around, the replay value imo is not. The games get boring quickly when you already know the game. The countless wave after wave of gun fights is a pretty old mechanic that doesn't age as well in this game.

Some of the best games for first time play throughs.

 

[toooooot]

I gotta agree, the games that were just released are too popular. I keep watching streams of plague, this game looks gorgeous.

 

[Puiu]

I'll wait for the first 3 to come out too.

 

[passingposeidon]

I didn't even know this was out, but as a pure PC gamer who never played any of these, I would not be looking to pay full price for a six year old game which isn't the first in the series. A remake/port of the original trilogy would be tempting.

 

[dangh]

I didn't even know this was out, but as a pure PC gamer who never played any of these, I would not be looking to pay full price for a six year old game which isn't the first in the series. A remake/port of the original trilogy would be tempting.

How the price is an argument here? Sure there is little point to play it without first 3 titles, but tbh all of them separately are worth full price - and it is just E50 on Steam, which is less than usual price for new releases.
And don't worry about '6 years old' - amazingly, in the last 6 years came very few games which could be better than this one.

 

[punctualturn]

How the price is an argument here? Sure there is little point to play it without first 3 titles, but tbh all of them separately are worth full price - and it is just E50 on Steam, which is less than usual price for new releases.
And don't worry about '6 years old' - amazingly, in the last 6 years came very few games which could be better than this one.

Old game is old, it’s development money was already made. Granted, it took some more money to port it, but thats minuscule compared to the original budget.

Also, its “incomplete “ for people that never played the franchise before (I refuse in giving in to Sony walled garden, so I have never played any of these games). Personally, that will keep me away from this particular release.

Console players are used to high game prices, but not PC gamers, especially when the game is this old.

 

[SirDigby]

I've just never been bothered by Uncharted.... played a bit of Uncharted 2 on a friend's PS3 back in the day and just didn't really gel with it. Have recently played the Tomb Raider Squenix series and that was OK. I'd probably quite happily play the 4th Uncharted, but I hear the first one is janky and I prefer to start at the beginning.

 

[Inthenstus]

It is hypocritical to have exclusive games sony, shouldn’t of went insane over the Activision Microsoft deal, pushed me away, and others, no one likes companies with double standards

 

[inhility]

Uncharted 4 in my opinion quite contained in story term because its co starring new character in the series that never mentioned before (Sam), so I didnt feel like Im lose something when playing. But thats just me, though ...

That's cool if all you want from the game is the gamey part but plenty of people want the story part too and you're just not gonna get the whole picture jumping straight to the finale.

Either way, the result is out, should be a teaching moment for Sony but who knows with these big corps.

How the price is an argument here? Sure there is little point to play it without first 3 titles, but tbh all of them separately are worth full price - and it is just E50 on Steam, which is less than usual price for new releases.
And don't worry about '6 years old' - amazingly, in the last 6 years came very few games which could be better than this one.

It's still a port of an old game, of course they're free to price it however they want as do people choosing to take the deal or not.

It is hypocritical to have exclusive games sony, shouldn’t of went insane over the Activision Microsoft deal, pushed me away, and others, no one likes companies with double standards

lol that isn't what it's all about. if CoD were only as small as uncharted there would be nothing that stopped them just like how nothing stopped them from buying all previous studios before. but go ahead and bat for big corps, see the end result of that all with us customers getting the shortest end of the stick. at least my favorite company is 'winning' am I right?

 

[Theinsanegamer]

It skips the first 3 games in the franchise.

If I'm playing a remake of a series, I'm going to start from the beginning.

Otherwise, I'm going to spend my money on other games. I can wait.

Especially if the only title you can play is a largely unnecessary sequel. Uncharted 3 tied the story up in a nice little bow. 4 was an attempt to keep the gravy train rolling, and its sales on PS4 weren't great.

1-3 are already ported to PS4 via the Nathan drake collection. There's no reason they couldnt be on PC.

 

[zaku49]

Why play these if you haven't even played the older ones? This is probably 90% of the reason why it's doing poorly, all of the other games were fresh, so they didn't run into this issue.

 

[kira setsu]

It makes me happy to see that people really want the original games, I hope sony notices that.

 

[Lionvibez]

Especially if the only title you can play is a largely unnecessary sequel. Uncharted 3 tied the story up in a nice little bow. 4 was an attempt to keep the gravy train rolling, and its sales on PS4 weren't great.

1-3 are already ported to PS4 via the Nathan drake collection. There's no reason they couldnt be on PC.

I believe the dev team also said the older games would be more work to port as they would need to upgrade assets etc. So they decided to go with the newer collection first since it was less work. I don't believe the author premise that this will affects sony's strategy going forward. You have 3 hot launces in GOW, Spiderman, HZD and one soft one with uncharted.

So that is 3 good vs 1 bad those numbers would not be a reason to change course.

 

[axiomatic13]

You are missing 75% of the story? What's not to understand? If all the games were in there I imagine it would sell much better.

 

[m4a4]

I believe the dev team also said the older games would be more work to port as they would need to upgrade assets etc. So they decided to go with the newer collection first since it was less work. I don't believe the author premise that this will affects sony's strategy going forward. You have 3 hot launces in GOW, Spiderman, HZD and one soft one with uncharted.

So that is 3 good vs 1 bad those numbers would not be a reason to change course.

They've already remastered the first 3 for PS4 with "The Nathan Drake Collection".

That's not a good excuse to release the collections in the wrong order.

 

[dangh]

Old game is old, it’s development money was already made. Granted, it took some more money to port it, but thats minuscule compared to the original budget.

Also, its “incomplete “ for people that never played the franchise before (I refuse in giving in to Sony walled garden, so I have never played any of these games). Personally, that will keep me away from this particular release.

Console players are used to high game prices, but not PC gamers, especially when the game is this old.

There is no rule saying that game have to earn 'development money'. If there were anything like that, then I.e. CoD after selling 5 millions copies should be given free, because it's development money 'has been made'. You're getting a great product priced as other similar products. If you don't think it is a good value for you that's fine. But age really do not matter as there is not many new games who looks and plays on the same level, even, after years after.

As for the 'Sony's walled garden' I'm happy to see someone with dedication. You surely didn't give in to Apple walled garden, Microsoft walled garden and Steam walled garden. Same as me! GoG for live!

Console gamers do not spend that much on games, sales are pretty solid there as well, often on level of a steam sales. And that's true on Steam as well - many people buys games on sales, as the price of a new game on steam is not that much lower than on consoles anyway. Years ago you'd be right, but now difference in general is much lower (with some exception, usually games on playstation goes for 20% sale after 3 months, and 50% after 9 months).

 

[kira setsu]

I believe the dev team also said the older games would be more work to port as they would need to upgrade assets etc. So they decided to go with the newer collection first since it was less work. I don't believe the author premise that this will affects sony's strategy going forward. You have 3 hot launces in GOW, Spiderman, HZD and one soft one with uncharted.

So that is 3 good vs 1 bad those numbers would not be a reason to change course.

There is no rule saying that game have to earn 'development money'. If there were anything like that, then I.e. CoD after selling 5 millions copies should be given free, because it's development money 'has been made'. You're getting a great product priced as other similar products. If you don't think it is a good value for you that's fine. But age really do not matter as there is not many new games who looks and plays on the same level, even, after years after.

As for the 'Sony's walled garden' I'm happy to see someone with dedication. You surely didn't give in to Apple walled garden, Microsoft walled garden and Steam walled garden. Same as me! GoG for live!

Console gamers do not spend that much on games, sales are pretty solid there as well, often on level of a steam sales. And that's true on Steam as well - many people buys games on sales, as the price of a new game on steam is not that much lower than on consoles anyway. Years ago you'd be right, but now difference in general is much lower (with some exception, usually games on playstation goes for 20% sale after 3 months, and 50% after 9 months).

what!?
console gamers do spend more on games, why do you think games hit console first then PC 1 to 3 months later these days.

if anything its pc gamers who are yelling the loudest about having to spend money on games, same folks who buy 4090's will go apes*** over a 50 or 60 dollar game.

I own uncharted on ps3, vita, ps4, its my favorite series but sony dropped the ball only releasing one game thats the end of the protags story, and imo playing that single game at 60fps isnt worth another purchase, now if they released the originals with just an fps bump I'd snag those day1 no questions asked...whatever price and uc4