Whatever they're allowing on eshop, you know very well that it isn't comparable to advertising their strongest competitor and its entire history. There will probably be special conditions and taxes.

Goes without saying it's not a sure thing that Sony wants to port it in the first place. If they accelerate porting their few exclusives and to more platforms, they will slowly follow Xbox's fate, and they won't have Microsoft's software power to make up for it. I hope they'll go ahead and port AstroBot to Switch 2, coz I think it's a special case where the benefits outweigh the risks.

Their (Mario) strongest competitior ever was Sonic. Astro is a dwarf compared. And Nintendo even allowed that. Ok Sega is out of the Hardware business since nearly a quater century now but Sonic is still a "competitior somehow. If Nintendo is not afraid of Sonic (Even Sonic Racing is on Switch and Part 3 if you want to name it like that will follow and they do not seem to be afraid of it hurting Mario Kart) why should they be afraid of Astro? I would not even wonder if Sega announces Sonic Shuffle 2. Sure Nintendo would not want to launch Mario Party 11 on the same day but nobody can match Mario, neither Astro nor Sonic, at least saleswise. If you put Mario games as a whole franchise its total sales are even even higher than all GTA games combined!!

Yes, because 1, they just don't care about that, and 2, rejecting a game in their platform simply because it was made by a competitor opens them up for the risk of being sued for anticompetitive practices.

And 3, they don't care.

My brother in Christ, no one is comparing AstroBot to Mario's sales. Mario has no competition. And Sega's platforms as you said are done and dusted. So... what even is any of this about?

AstroBot is a Playstation reference galore. It's a great game, but it's also a fat ad to Playstation's history. So I paused and thought about that for a couple of seconds, big deal.

It's more similar to Mario and would be a bigger seller than any 3D or modern Sonic game if ported to a Nintendo platform. But none of this has anything to do with the little point that I made.

Of course Astro Bot on Switch (2) would make people who are interested buying a Switch probably. And it would give it a higher value if Astro Bot was given an audience of 150 million+ users.

Sony won't start porting their first party games to Switch 2, that would lessen the need to get a Playstation and will just make a competitor console more appealing.

They put Lego Horizon on Switch. A lot of people are thinking Sony will put some of their games on Switch 2. I think they will.

^This. While I’m not a PC gamer myself, i’d imagine that most PC gamers aren’t coming to console. They would sooner emulate the game than ever consider purchasing the system itself, whether that be to run their games at a consistent 60/120fps, having their library centralized in a single system, etc. Sony recognizes this, and chooses not to wage that war by simply porting their games over. This goes in contrast with console gamers, who would be willing purchase a PS5 (and not emulate) in order to play — for example — God of War.

One of the reasons I choose to be a PC gamer is because of that, having my entire library in a single system. And with Steam it becomes really easy to buy and play your games. Of course, there's the fact that you need to upgrade in order to play more recent games, but I don't think it's as tough has having to purchase multiple systems.

Now with Sony supporting PC, things are even better. I played a couple of their games on my RIG (Days Gone, Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart and The Last of Us Part I) and it was a really impressive experience.

As a PC gamer, I'm very happy with Playstation support. If they bring Astro Bot to PC, I'm surely going to try it (I don't think I would need to upgrade again).

Sony is different from Microsoft in that they can test things out and change their plans whenever they want without any serious damage to the Playstation platform. The moment they feel porting games is harming them as a platform holder, they'll be sure to return to the old ways or add a new limit to their porting strategy. They are searching for the right balance.

Microsoft probably wouldn't return to exclusivity because it's too late and would be confusing. They think it isn't worth sacrificing dozens of millions of software sales. They're a publisher first and a platform holder 2nd. CoD on a medium sized PS install base seems to dominate Xbox + PC sales combined, so it takes courage and a hint of lunacy to mess with that. MS can literally kill the Xbox brand (and GamePass) and still be a bigger gaming entity and make more money than Playstation.

Curiously, Sony sequels on PC seem to be doing much worse than their predecessors despite building a playerbase and everyone knowing their "exclusives" are coming. I wonder how the decision makers at Sony are taking this.

As long as ported software sell a decent amount and won't hurt Playstation's hardware sales, Sony's testing might extend to Nintendo platforms beyond weak games like Lego Horizon. If it doesn't work well for them, they can pull the plug without much trouble. Porting a few games to Switch is somewhat risky, but it's a risk that makes business sense. I think Playstation is strong enough to withstand risks of this level.