It appears that the original post of a wild tweet led to a huge talk among the gamers. The author uploaded a photo of the game Marvel’s Spider-Man being played on a handheld PC with an Xbox logo. The caption under the photo reads, “Sony is going to block the games.🤣” and to be honest, the comments are even more amusing than the post itself.
What should be explained first is the ROG Ally’s identity. A PC in the palm of your hand is a handheld version of a Windows PC. However, it will not be a rare Xbox console which Microsoft would control as if it had complete control over it. The owner is just playing PC games through Steam or other online stores on this device. So, the idea that Sony might, in some way, “block” its games from being played on a PC device is – well, it’s really something.
Somehow, the user responses to this tweet are so hysterical that they could easily be part of a comedy show. One gladson user directly asked “Sony themselves ported the games to PCs. Why would they block it from running on a PC?” which is really the most logical answer one could come up with. Picture this: Sony put a lot of money and effort into making their exclusive games available on PC and now they are going to limit them to a specific PC hardware? That would be a huge loss in terms of business.
Antrexo, another user, gave the whole story when he said: “They won’t, it’s just a pc handheld, it’s not an actual xbox.” And they could not be more correct. This whole controversy is grounded in a complete misunderstanding of the ROG Ally’s real nature. It’s not clamoring for the PlayStation console space but is merely another way to gain access to PC games.
Not only that, the debate is really getting hotter. Some comments are in different languages, the showing up of which implies how worldwide the gaming dispute has become at this point. For example, a user wrote in Spanish “Definitivamente eres estupido”, which translates to “You’re definitely stupid” – not a very nice reaction, but the sentiment is clear. Another reply came from Portuguese: “O aparelho se tornou a maior vitrine para os jogos da SONY. Ela tá é muito feliz com tudo isso.” which means “The device has become the biggest showcase for SONY games. She is very happy with all this.” And honestly? That is probably the closest to the truth.
The financial aspect in this whole scenario is what actually makes it hilarious. A number of people have pointed out that the money goes to Sony when someone buys the ported versions of their games via Steam, not to Microsoft. JusticeSolid put it this way: “Whh would they. They get money xbxo doesn’t.” A very long online debate even started regarding whether or not Microsoft gets any money through the sale of ROG Ally, with one group saying it is merely a hardware partnership and the other claiming that Xbox gets its share of the software sales.
The odd thing is that this tweet is a stage for the platform war where the users are fighting. PlayStation and Xbox fans are coming back at each other with one telling the original poster “you got PlayStation rent free in your head” and another countering with “show me that you have it I’ll give you respect.” The console war energy is indeed very strong with this one.
Moreover, there is some debate whether or not the ROG Ally is actually being bought by people or simply getting all the hype. Brian T. remarked, “I think a majority of people that hyped this thing didn’t buy it I’ll stick with my Switch 2 graphically its better with DLSS,” and this indirectly points out that not everyone is convinced of the utility of such devices.
The entire episode brings back the memory of the great confusion prevailing in the gaming industry due to the introduction of new platforms and user migrating between them. Not only are there the traditional consoles, PC gaming, and cloud gaming; but also these hybrid handhelds that run games from more than one storefront. It is not an easy task to keep track of all of it.
Nonetheless, the tweet responses indicate that most gamers are aware of the ecosystem trick. They understand that when Sony brings games to PC, it’s not for the few using that hardware, but they want as many people as possible to buy the games. Cutting off games from a particular hardware would mean losing that revenue stream, which is something no business would do.
The Twitter drama reveals that the original tweet was an unsuccessful attempt to trap Sony into a “gotcha” moment. Nevertheless, it is based on a complete misunderstanding of the situation in the PC gaming world. What some users expressed is that the ROG Ally is just a PC and that Sony is not in the business of blocking their games from running on PCs – but rather allowing those games to be sold to the largest number of PC players possible.
At the end of the day, all this Twitter fuss is just another case of gamers discussing fiercely about … well, everything. Console wars, hardware preferences or just pointing out misinformation, the gaming community always manages to entertain us. And to be honest? That’s what makes being a gamer so exhilarating – even when we are engaged in heated debates about things that do not make sense.
Next time when someone tells you that Sony will block the running of its games on certain hardware, just ignore it, and keep playing on whichever device you like. After all, that’s the very meaning of gaming – having fun regardless of the platform you are using.
