Spider-Man Is Spectacular on PC but Is It Enough for Indian Audiences?
The PS4 version is still king from a sales standpoint.
Following Sony’s strategy of making its biggest and best games available on PC, Spider-Man is set to debut on the platform this week. After God of War’s sliver of success early in the year, which resulted in strong sales at retail (Sony lets Indian game stores sell PC codes of its games) as well as a welcome bump in accessories such as controllers, will Peter Parker’s PC presence move the needle yet again?
Spider-Man PC port impressions
Much like God of War, Sony dropped a host of options to choose from. Be it uncapped frame rates, arbitrary resolution support, ultrawide aspect ratio support, multiple input options, and PC-specific technologies like Nvidia’s DLSS, you’ll be hard-pressed to find an aspect of the game you can’t customise.
The game itself is a treat to play particularly if you have a substantial set up. With a Zotac Magnus One (Intel Core i7-10700, 32GB RAM, RTX 3070, and 2TB SSD), obtaining around 75fps with all settings maxed out at 1440p was easy even in more demanding sections of play. DualSense support is a welcome touch as well, though you’d need to use a wired USB connection to make it work.
Having support for ultrawide aspect ratio, many graphics options that go above the console version and the ability to play at above 60fps elevates it into an experience that is essential for PC players who don’t own a console or haven’t played Spider-Man yet.
As someone who has finished Spider-Man on the PS4 Pro and played through a chunk of it on PS5, the PC version feels more responsive and looks sharper. To me, it’s the definitive way to play the game, if you have a powerful enough PC to run it. Else the PS5 version is pretty good despite the glaring lack of a physical release.
And while Peter Parker’s PC presence is near perfect, Sony’s strategy for the platform, particularly in markets like India, is anything but.
PlayStation on PC in India — a long-term and long tail bet?
There are a few groups Sony is targeting with Spider-Man on PC. These are the dyed-in-wool PC gamers, console owners that have access to PCs, and those who played the game on PS4 or PS5 and want to see how far it can scale with the right hardware.
The first group of people are likely why this game is priced at $59.99 / Rs. 3,999. There has been ample rumbling from India’s vocal PC community about the price being too high. This is because the game is either on PlayStation Plus or very cheap on console right now.
The same was true for both God of War and Days Gone when they hit PC and it didn’t really affect sales with both selling well on Steam at least. It’s something publishers have been aware of for some time now, happy to keep pricing high save for some high-profile instances — namely Deathloop and Hitman 3.
This time around however, Sony has been proactive in pushing retail sales of Spider-Man PC codes complete with standees and branding in stores. The response has been far from favourable compared to God of War. Several store owners speaking to me under condition of anonymity fearing retribution claim that pre-order numbers are flat, majorly due to price.
“We’ve probably got around 10 pre-orders across our 4 stores for the game on PC, and in the interim, we sold around 50 units of the game on PS4 in this week alone,” says one retailer with stores across the country. “God of War did better, we even saw a healthy bump in controller sales. With this? Nothing.”
Most point to the high price being a barrier — for comparison: God of War was Rs. 3,299 at launch compared to Spider-Man’s Rs. 3,999. Retail sluggishness suggests a far cry from the game being a frequent fixture on Steam’s best-selling chart for India since it went up for pre-order last month.
All of this suggests a different kind of audience. Steam is likely attracting those willing to tolerate Sony’s price hikes. With the desktop market just picking up thanks to the crypto winter, I won’t be surprised to see Spider-Man carve out its own niche the moment discounts set in, making this a long-term and a long tail bet.
Game prices in India — PC vs console mindset
For now, the market and player sentiment appears decidedly mixed. Fascinating when you consider how well the game sold on the PS4 at launch. The first three months saw Spider-Man rack up around 50,000 sales in India on the PS4. Incidentally this was at the same Rs. 3,999 price point.
If you’re wondering why PC gamers are up in arms while their console brethren are willing to pay the price of admission at launch, well it boils down to expectations. For the longest time the thinking was PC is mass market and should have benefits of scale, with costs passed down to consumers. This resulted in games like GTA 4 having a $10 price versus the rest of the world’s $50. However this resulted in re-exporting aplenty among other concerns.
This resulted in a change in thought process from publishers: if there’s an audience willing to pay much more, that’s where the focus would be. This extended to PC physical copies and Steam.
“It’s better to have five customers at Rs. 2,499 each than seven at Rs. 999. The sales increase at lower prices were marginal,” claimed one sales executive at a AAA publisher.
Although, the assumption from the gaming community was that the INR pricing for Steam that was introduced in 2015 would make every AAA publisher under the sun drop price. This was true for a brief few months. But again, the math didn’t work out for most of them. Which is why most reverted to console-like pricing or in the case of Bandai Namco and Square Enix, throw a dart while blindfolded to price PC games on Steam.
By now, Sony’s likely moved over 100,000 units of Spider-Man on PS4 in India. While its unlikely that the PC version will hit this milestone anytime soon, it’s safe to say that future PlayStation PC releases like The Last of Us Part 1 will follow the same pricing strategy. For better or worse.