Stellar Blade PC sales prove that console exclusives hold everyone back

Stellar Blade has finally come to Steam, after a year of PS5 exclusivity. The game has sold well out of the gate, clearing one million copies (via Game Donga) sold on Steam, bringing the total sales to over 3 million. This adds to the continued success of PlayStation during this console generation. The math suggests that Stellar Blade sold an additional 50% of its PS5 sales within a few days on Steam, making it a massive success for both PlayStation and developer Shift Up. As the game continues to sell on Steam, alongside its DLC that has been released since its original launch, it begs a question about PlayStation's current strategy. While console owners don't necessarily benefit from exclusives, since other people not being able to play something doesn't improve your own personal experience, did Stellar Blade and the PS5 benefit from the game being exclusive for a year or did exclusivity hold it back?

PlayStation ports have sold relatively well on PC

We don't have all the information, but the games have sold relatively well

PlayStation is not always as forthcoming with its sales numbers as Shift Up was with the Stellar Blade numbers, but with the information available to us, it seems like most PlayStation ports have sold relatively well on Steam, although we also don't know what PlayStation's expectations are for these different ports. Using Steam concurrents, which measures the number of players playing a game at one time, we can figure out a relative idea of how successful some of these games are.

Stellar Blade reached a concurrent peak of 192,078 (via SteamDB), the second highest behind Helldivers 2 at 458,709 (via VGC) and Ghost of Tsushima following at number 3 at 77,154. However, an example of why Steam concurrents don't always tell the whole story, is that Horizon Zero Dawn sits at a peak of 56,557 but, from the Insomniac Leaks (via GameWorldObserver), we know that as of February 2023, it had sold 3.3 million copes on Steam, triple the amount Stellar Blade has sold so far. The worst performing port of the bunch as that same time period was Sackboy: A Big Adventure at about 62,900 copies, but it likely holds the bottom spot in PS5 console game sales as well. Most releases have sold at least a million copies according to the leak, and those number have certainly grown since, so it seems like PS5 games sell well on PC.

The best-selling PlayStation game on Steam released day and date

Helldivers 2's success suggests that releasing on Steam the same day has benefits

Helldivers 2 has a huge lead in peak concurrents, partially due to it being a multiplayer game, but as one of the few games released on PS5 and Steam on the same day, it's one of the best-selling games made by PlayStation in the PS5 generation. It's also one of the few games that we have official PC sales numbers for, if not totally up to date. Via Polygon, Helldivers 2 sold 12 million copies in its first week, with roughly 60% of sales coming from Steam. It's likely almost doubled that total in the time since, but if it continued to sell the majority of its copies on Steam, it suggests that PlayStation should release these games the same day, or much faster, on Steam.

Having a shorter time between releases seems to benefit games, like Stellar Blade, but there is an example of it not helping. Marvel's Spider-Man 2 released on Steam a little over a year after its initial release, quicker than previous games. It has a peak concurrent of only 28,189 although it's estimated that about half a million people own it on Steam (via SteamDB). It's important to note that the PC port of Marvel's Spider-Man 2 was rough at launch, likely stunting its sales.

Xbox games are selling well on PS5

No reason this wouldn't work the same way reversed

It's hard to argue that Xbox hasn't been successful in selling its games on PlayStation 5. The PlayStation Blog April 2025 top downloads, which lists the top 20, includes five Xbox published games, and only one PlayStation game, with Forza Horizon 5 and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered taking the top spots. Sea of Thieves quickly reached one million sold on PS5 after launch (via Hitmarker), and more games are being announced and released by Xbox on the PS5. More sales benefit Xbox and its studios, which can likely make bigger and better games moving forward if they can sell these additional copies.

While there are more than double the number of PS5s that have sold compared to the Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation would likely sell a ton of copies on Xbox, and considering a big part of the Insomniac leaks were just how expensive PlayStation games have become to produce, it seems foolish to continue keeping games exclusive to the PS5. PlayStation will eventually have to start scaling back its first-party game budgets, if it doesn't find new people to sell those games to.

The PS5 is drastically outselling the Xbox Series X|S

PlayStation has seen success with big exclusives, and Xbox has struggled without them

The PS5 has sold over 30 million more consoles compared to the Xbox Series X|S as of early 2024 (via Forbes), so it's not exactly shocking that PlayStation is sticking with its anti-consumer strategy of exclusive games. It has seemingly worked, with far more people choosing a PS5 over an Xbox, likely due to their existing libraries being on PlayStation, and due to it having more high-quality exclusives. Even if PlayStation is struggling to sell enough copies to clear the enormous game budgets it has, the executives at the copy likely believe that exclusives contribute to that massive lead in console sales, deterring them from porting them to other platforms.

Games are only getting more expensive to make

Money drives all companies, and sooner or later, PlayStation is going to have to make hard choices

There is no argument that Stellar Blade benefited from its PS5 exclusivity, outside of getting a publishing deal with PlayStation. The game sold an additional 50% on PC, something that Shift Up would have benefited from more than a year ago. Shift Up has already announced a sequel to Stellar Blade (via IGN), but the company may have been able to pitch a bigger version of the sequel if it already had the additional PC sales.

Games are going to get more expensive to make, as higher graphical fidelity requires more people and more time, and PlayStation's live-service push has flopped outside Helldivers 2, making it even tougher for PlayStation to make money. Consumers don't benefit from getting these games late on PC, and PS5 owners won't benefit from exclusives if PlayStation has to scale down its games to keep budgets in check. All the signs point to a future without exclusives, and as more PC success stories like Stellar Blade happen, the more likely it is that PlayStation finally rips the exclusive Band-Aid off.