The three most recent games from French studio Quantic Dream — Detroit: Become Human, Beyond: Two Souls, and Heavy Rain — are all PlayStation exclusives at the moment, but they’re on their way to Windows PC with the help of Epic Games, the companies announced Wednesday at the 2019 Game Developers Conference. PC ports of all three games are scheduled to be released “later this year,” and each one will be sold exclusively in the Epic Games Store for one year, Quantic Dream said in a news release. The company “partnered with” Epic to bring the titles to PC, according to the announcement. It’s unclear if Epic is funding the development of the PC versions, or if the company merely paid for the timed exclusive on the distribution arrangement. We’ve asked the companies for comment, and will update this article with any information we receive. The news comes as no great shock. In January, Quantic Dream announced that it had taken an investment from Chinese internet company NetEase for a minority stake in the studio. At the time, Quantic Dream executives said they would take their future projects to multiple platforms, suggesting that the company’s long-running exclusive partnership with Sony had come to an end. The wording in Wednesday’s announcement underscored that. “We are so grateful for twelve fantastic years of collaboration with Sony Interactive Entertainment and all they have allowed us to create and produce,” said Quantic Dream co-CEO Guillaume de Fondaumière. “With this new partnership with Epic, we can now expand our products to a wider fan base and allow PC players to enjoy our titles.” Paris-based Quantic Dream was founded in 1997 by David Cage, who directs all the studio’s games and also serves as co-CEO alongside de Fondaumière. The company has a reputation for making action-adventure games in the science fiction genre, with a stated focus on telling interactive stories with branching narratives — although the stories themselves, written by Cage, often leave something to be desired. Quantic Dream’s games are also known for pushing the medium forward on the technical front, with high-fidelity performance capture and impressive visuals. Following the multiplatform releases of its first two games, 1999’s Omikron: The Nomad Soul and 2005’s Indigo Prophecy, Quantic Dream signed an exclusive publishing contract with Sony in 2006. The first project under this deal, Heavy Rain, was released in 2010 on PlayStation 3. Next up was Beyond: Two Souls in 2013, also on PS3; both were ported to PlayStation 4 before the release of the studio’s latest game, 2018’s Detroit: Become Human. Sony published all three of the PlayStation-exclusive games. But Quantic Dream is an independent studio, and it appears that the developer retains ownership of the intellectual property for its games — otherwise, Sony would have to agree to the PC versions. (Neither Quantic Dream nor Sony responded to requests for comment regarding their publishing arrangement.) We’ve also asked Quantic Dream for information on who is developing the PC ports, and are awaiting details.<doc-sep>Quantic Dream’s PlayStation 4 titles will finally arrive on PC, and each will be an Epic Games Store timed-exclusives. Beyond: Two Souls, Heavy Rain, and Detroit: Become Human are coming to PC through the Epic Games Store. The games were announced as timed-exclusives today at GDC 2019. Like Phoenix Point, all three Quantic Dream titles will be exclusive to Epic Games Store for one year. A sizzle reel showing games on the store, or coming to it, was released as is posted below. Watch on YouTube After being a PlayStation-exclusive developer for 12 years, Quantic Dream announced earlier this year it would be going multi-platform. Quantic Dream is also working on a new, cross-platform game engine which will allow it to release multi-platform games in the future. It will continue to work on games for PlayStation, but will also consider other platforms. The goal is to make its games “accessible to as many gamers as possible worldwide, regardless of the platform.” This is the start of it, then. Beyond: Two Souls, Heavy Rain, and Detroit: Become Human will be released this year on the Epic Games Store.<doc-sep>Over the past decade, French studio Quantic Dream has become closely associated with the PlayStation platform, thanks to games like Detroit: Become Human and Beyond: Two Souls. But now, the developer is expanding its reach to the PC, and it’s starting with Epic’s new game store. Today, Quantic announced plans to bring its three latest games — Detroit, Beyond, and Heavy Rain — to Epic’s digital shop as timed exclusives for a year after launch. The move comes not long after Chinese internet giant NetEase invested in Quantic Dream with the goal of reaching a larger global audience. Both announcements represent a dramatic shift for the studio. “David Cage and I have planned the next evolution of Quantic Dream very carefully,” Guillaume de Fondaumière, the studio’s co-CEO and head of publishing, tells The Verge. “The move to PC constitutes our studio’s first effort to develop non PlayStation exclusive games in over 13 years, but also an opportunity to gradually engage the team on multiple projects at the same time. “The most important evolution for Quantic Dream, however, is that we are no longer a developer working with a publisher,” he says. “Starting with the PC versions of Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls and Detroit: Become Human, we will be self-publishing all our titles.” Quantic becomes the latest notable developer to choose Epic’s store over Steam, the long-dominant PC gaming marketplace. Launched in early December, the Epic Store has managed to lure big-name titles like The Division 2 and Metro: Exodus as well as prominent indie games like Hades and Journey. At its Unreal keynote at GDC today, Epic also announced a handful of other prominent developers that are launching on PC exclusively through its store, with incoming titles including The Outer Worlds, Control, and Afterparty. One of the most appealing parts of the store for developers is the revenue split: Epic takes a 12 percent cut of all sales, compared to 30 percent for Valve. (Discord’s fledgling game shop has entered the arms race as well, offering developers 90 percent of all revenue.) “Quality has always been of paramount importance to us and the fact that the Epic Games Store offers its partners a better share of revenues will ultimately enable us to create more qualitative games for players,” says de Fondaumière. “Another important aspect is curation, which will enable our games to stand alongside other high quality titles. The store being less crowded, it will also result in more exposure for our titles to the community, in particular at launch.” No release dates have been announced yet, but all three games are expected to debut on the PC later this year.<doc-sep>
Big change is afoot for French developer Quantic Dreams, and it's good news for PC gaming fans. Some of the studio's most popular games, including Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human, are coming to PC. They'll debut first on the Epic Games Store, with a one-year exclusivity window before launching on other, unspecified PC stores, Quantic said in a press release. This is a big deal, considering these games were previously not only exclusive to console, but only the PlayStation family. And in the case of Detroit, it was released as a PS4 exclusive back in May 2018, less than a year ago. The new PC releases join a variety of other new Epic Games Store exclusives announced this week. "We are so grateful for twelve fantastic years of collaboration with Sony Interactive Entertainment and all they have allowed us to create and produce," Quantic Dream co-CEO Guillaume de Fondaumiere said in a statement. "With this new partnership with Epic, we can now expand our products to a wider fan base and allow PC players to enjoy our titles." Quantic's earlier titles, including The Nomad Soul and Indigo Prophecy (aka Fahrenheit), were released on PC, along with additional console platforms in some cases. "We are extremely excited for the Epic Games Store to host such a well-known and established video game studio like Quantic Dream," Epic Games' Steve Allison said in a statement. "Their games have truly pioneered the genre of interactive storytelling, and with their expansion onto other platforms we are truly honored they chose to take that first step with Epic Games." Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human will launch on the Epic Games store later this year. However, Quantic didn't provide specific release dates or pricing details. Quantic is going through big changes. Though it was never owned by Sony, the company exclusively released its games on Sony machines since 2010 with Heavy Rain. Now, the company is working on a new IP that will come to multiple platforms, while it's taken on NetEase as a minority stakeholder to help fund its "future technologies." NetEase, a Chinese internet company, is itself making moves lately. The company also invested $100 million into Bungie to develop non-Destiny games. The company also poured $30 million in Second Dinner, a small team founded by Hearthstone developers who are making a Marvel game. Looking to Quantic's future, studio boss David Cage said the company aims to become a "global, multi-franchise company" that retains its independence, and raising the money from NetEase will help it achieve that. "We want to keep developing original games in the genre we pioneered, but also expand our audience by being present on all platforms," he said. As for the Epic Games Store, it's attracted a number of developers since its launch in 2018. Unlike other PC game stores, the Epic Games Store gives developers 88 percent of revenue, while keeping only 12 percent.