Horizon: Zero Dawn was the first big AAA game from PlayStation to make its way to the PC platform. Since then, Days Gone has joined the foray with Uncharted 4 expected to join soon, following an earlier leak from an investor report. Earlier this year, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s CEO and President, Jim Ryan, confirmed that Sony was committed to porting over more of its titles to the PC. The company’s subsequent moves suggest Ryan was telling the truth. However, it is the company’s most recent acquisition that serves as additional proof that more PC ports of first-party Sony games are coming soon.
Sony welcomes Nixxes Software as its fourteenth studio
It was only a few days ago that Sony added the thirteenth studio to its PlayStation Studios banner, with Housemarque. But, while most audiences were expecting Sony to announce that it had officially acquired Bluepoint Games, the console manufacturer went out and picked up a different studio altogether. The name Nixxes Software probably won’t ring a bell, the studio isn’t exactly what you’d call well-known. The “industry-leading Dutch company” doesn’t make too many games. Rather, it specializes in porting already existing games to other platforms - in particular, the PC. PlayStation Studios head, Hermen Hulst, welcomed Nixxes Software to the PlayStation Studios family in a move that’s described as to help “provide high quality in-house technical and development capabilities for PlayStation Studios.” Since being founded in 1999, Nixxes Software has worked with companies like Crystal Dynamics, IO Interactive and Eidos Montreal to bring their games over to the PC. The studio’s latest project was Crystal Dynamics’ Marvel’s Avengers. For all its flaws, Marvel’s Avengers had an excellent PC port. The superhero mash-up game was properly optimized to let a variety of hardware run it at reasonable frame rates with minimal graphical compromises.
Are more PlayStation PC ports coming soon?
We already know that Sony plans on bringing more of its games over to the PC. The acquisition of Nixxes Software only reaffirms this. Nonetheless, we shouldn’t expect to see more PlayStation games come to the PC so fast. Sony seems intent on making sure that the quality of its games is retained when they are ported over to the PC. That said, Nixxes Software may already be close to finishing its work on the PC port of Square Enix’s Final Fantasy VII Remake if Square Enix hired them to do it. Even if Nixxes Software specializes in porting games to the PC, doing so remains a herculean task. We shouldn’t be too quick to forget the amount of optimization each first-party title goes through to make it run well on the PlayStation consoles. If it’s any consolation, Sony’s acquisition of Nixxes Software means that we can start to expect the quality of future PC ports of PlayStation titles to improve even more. Now, if only Sony could officially announce its Bluepoint Games acquisition.
