With Kojima Productions operating under Sony’s games publishing division, fans wondered if Death Stranding would ever see a PC release. And great news — Sony’s making it happen.
This morning, Kojima Productions and Italian publisher 505 Studios announced that the latter will be handling the PC port for the hotly-anticipated game. It’ll be a while, though, as they expect the release to happen summer 2020.
It seems the port may be in good hands. 505 Studios most recently made another big splash through Control, an urban fantasy adventure game that received high marks from players and critic. Beyond that, they’re also well-known for publishing farming-exploration simulator Stardew Valley and undersea exploration game Abzû.
Sony rarely gives give multi-platform slack to PlayStation-exclusive titles. Still, now that Sony has affirmed its eye for top studios—and their well-performing games—it’s no surprise they want to expand their games’ availability (and profits). This summer, Sony games studio chairman Shawn Layden told Bloomberg that they intended on expanding their reach.
“[Y]ou will see in the future some titles coming out of my collection of studios which may need to lean into a wider installed base,” he told the newspaper in an interview. According to Bloomberg, this especially applies to games with multiplayer aspects. This sounds similar in strategy to how Microsoft handled their company-exclusive titles Sea of Thieves and Gears 5, which have cross-platform compatibility between Windows and Xbox One.
More Death Stranding:
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We don’t have any further details than “PC port” and “summer 2020,” and a press release from 505 games says as much.
However, we do have some questions already. Namely, what platform will we see the game launch on? My personal suspicion is the Epic Games Store, given 505’s affinity towards it as of late. Control was funded by Epic for temporary exclusivity on the store. Plus, Abzû was recently a free game on the store. And obviously on EGS, Sony could get more of the margins, as 88% of profits go to the publisher. Still, there’s nothing saying it can’t be a Steam or even a multi-platform release.
We’re also wondering if the “strands” will be cross-platform. In the style of (and I’m so sorry for saying this but this is the best analogy I can find) Dark Souls, players will be able to leave notes around the world of Death Stranding. Supposedly, it’s to try to help players find their way around. But we’re talking gamers here. If the platforms’ strands get separated, it could be a good case study regarding… something.
For those of us a little more eager to get into the game, Death Stranding releases November 8th for the PlayStation 4. (And exclusively so for about nine months.) The base game goes for $59.99, and some collector’s editions are available.
