Something to look forward to: Sony’s PlayStation State of Play May Showcase 2024 took place yesterday, where we saw a big PC-related announcement: God of War: Ragnarok is officially coming to our favorite platform on September 19, 2024, bringing with it platform-specific extras such as an uncapped framerate. Unfortunately, you’ll need a PSN account to play it.
Rumors that God of War: Ragnarok would be joining other PlayStation games on the PC have been circulating for a while now. Sony confirmed last night that it will land on September 19 along with its Valhalla DLC, a roguelite epilogue that launched as a free upgrade for owners of the PlayStation version.
Ragnarok is arriving on PC with a slew of platform-specific features, including an unlocked framerate, ultrawide support (21:9 and 32:9), and compatibility with the three big upscaling technologies: Nvidia DLSS 3.7, AMD FSR 3.1, and Intel XeSS 1.3.
The latest God of War will be joining several former PlayStation-exclusive titles on the PC, including the previous game in the rebooted series, Horizon Forbidden West, The Last of Us Part 1, and many more.
But Sony isn’t changing its strategy when it comes to releasing games on both platforms. Soon-to-be co-CEO Hermen Hulst reiterated what the company said in 2022: that Sony will release its live-service games like Helldivers 2 day-and-date on PS5 and PC.
Helldivers2 has proved massively successful, apart from the controversy over the PSN sign-in requirement that Sony eventually backed down from. Ragnarok will also require a PSN account. A footnote at the bottom of Sony’s announcement post for the game reads: “PlayStation Network Account required, subject to the PlayStation Terms of Services and User Agreement.” The same message appears on the Steam and Epic pre-order pages. It seems Sony isn’t concerned about the inevitable outcry over this requirement.
As for the single-player “tentpole” titles, they will keep arriving on PC long after being released on the PS5 to expose them to “new audiences.” Hulst hopes that this will encourage PC owners to buy a PS5 so they can play the sequels on PlayStation rather than waiting for a PC release.
Hermen Hulst, soon to be co-CEO of Sony’s PlayStation business, addresses day 1 PC releases. Live service games will come day and date on PS5 and PC, but single player narrative games on PC are designed to then entice PC owners to play sequels on a PlayStation console pic.twitter.com/uAO0stlBS6
– Tom Warren (@tomwarren) May 29, 2024
It’s debatable how well such a strategy would work; PC gamers are known for their patience when it comes to waiting for games to be released on the platform; it took almost a year and a half for GTA V to come to PC following its original September 2013 launch on PS3/Xbox 360.
There were plenty of PS5 games and two new PSV2 titles announced during the State of Play event. Check them out in the embed at the top of the page.
