PlayStation’s PC Ports Might Be On The Mend, But The Last Of Us Part 2 Isn’t Enough

PlayStation‘s recent spate of PC ports is coming along well, but they still have a long way to go. Last week, on April 3, 2025, PlayStation Publishing finally brought The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered to PC. This follows its 2023 PC release of the original TLOU, and is part of a wider industry trend that’s seen tons of Sony- and Microsoft-published games going multi-platform instead of sticking to their proprietary consoles. Most recently, Sony announced new Patapon and Everybody’s Golf releases for Switch, while Indiana Jones and the Great Circle gears up for its PS5 release.

Of recent Sony PC releases, though, The Last of Us Part 2 seems to be one of the most well-received. It’s managed to dodge Helldivers-style controversies by making PSN sign-in optional, and is currently sitting pretty with a “Very Positive” rating on Steam aggregated from over 4,000 reviews. Still, PlayStation has miles to go as a PC game publisher before it’s truly proven itself on the platform.

The Last Of Us Part 2 Actually Works Fine On PC

Lots Of Graphical Settings, With Some Issues

For a big, graphically demanding, triple-A game at launch, and certainly relative to other PlayStation-published games, The Last of Us Part 2 actually runs pretty well on PC. Tons of positive player reviews specifically mention its realistic, detailed graphics as positive points, especially with the greater potential provided by more powerful PC hardware. Graphical settings are many, and detailed; each option ranks its impact on various PC components. On a PC with the appropriate recommended specs, it runs pretty consistently. You don’t get to any kind of positive rating on Steam without halfway decent performance, after all.

Helldivers person holding up a fist next to an ape from ape escape and the monster from knack.

After Learning Why PlayStation Closed One Of Its Best Studios, I’m Even More Frustrated By Sony’s Approach

PlayStation has gone all-in on triple-a development, which has come at the cost of studios and possibly even innovation in the industry.

TLOU Part 2 on PC has its drawbacks, though: it’s incredibly demanding on the player’s hardware. A review by Digital Foundry notes that, in order to run the game on Medium settings, TLOU Part 2 demands an incredibly powerful GPU – an RTX 3060 or better – and argues that the game looks worse at Medium on PC than it does in its base PS4 version.

The review also notes that V-sync can have a noticeable, negative effect on performance. And while the game is technically playable on Steam Deck, it takes a massive graphical and frame rate hit in order to work on the handheld. Visual issues, like misplaced shadows and flashing, are also pretty common in the PC port.

PlayStation’s Recent PC Ports Have Struggled

TLOU 2 Is Relatively Polished

So TLOU 2 has its issues, but, for the most part, it runs pretty smoothly as long as you’ve got the right hardware. That makes it an outlier, though, as PlayStation’s previous PC ports have struggled to keep up. Just about every major Sony game that’s come to PC in the past few years has suffered significant performance issues at launch: Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, both Horizon games, Ratchet & Clank, et cetera.

This is a fairly common thing with PC ports of console games. It’s easy enough to predict how a game will perform on various different models of a particular console, since developers can test it for quality in-house. But since every PC is made up of different components, it’s effectively impossible to ensure stable, consistent performance across every single possible permutation of PC hardware. And while many of these issues have been fixed over time, they definitely hurt sales of Sony’s PC ports in their early days, and can earn them a bad reputation.

PlayStation PC Ports Still Have Some Work Ahead

Consistency Is Key

Custom image by Katarina Cimbaljevic

It’s nice to see the level of improvement TLOU 2 has made in terms of porting PS5 games to PC. However, Sony’s PC ports still lack consistency, and that’s becoming a problem. With each successive flawed release, Sony games gain a reputation for jank on PC, which leads to skepticism about its future output.

Atomfall cultist character holding an axe next to a PS5 and Xbox Series X.

Atomfall’s Last Gen Visuals Aren’t A Problem, But They Do Reveal The Biggest Problem With The PS5 & Xbox Series X/S

Atomfall’s visuals have been called “last-gen”. While that mostly isn’t a problem in this case, it does point out a problem with current-gen consoles.

Hopefully, future PS5-to-PC ports can learn the lessons of TLOU 2, providing similar suites of graphics options with clear delineations as to their impact on various PC components. Greater optimization is always welcome, too, and could go a long way in proving Sony games’ viability on PC.

Ultimately, it’s going to take a few successive releases, each showing growth over the last, to restore Sony’s reputation as a publisher of PC games and make future entries seem worthwhile. The Last of Us Part 2 is a step in the right direction, but it’s not enough in and of itself. Hopefully, whatever PlayStation game comes to PC next will take cues from its improvements.

Source: Digital Foundry