Has PlayStation lost its way? (pic: Sony)
A reader is frustrated by the recent PlayStation Showcase and Sony’s attitude to its aftermath – and what that implies for the future.
A reader is frustrated not just by the contents of the recent PlayStation 5 Showcase but Sony’s attitude to its aftermath and what that implies for the future.
So that didn’t go the way anyone expected, did it? This time last week I was looking forward to the PlayStation Showcase and expecting it to be ‘the big one.’ The blowout announcement event to make up for the last couple of years of silence and increasingly few new releases. Instead, Sony managed to waste over an hour of our time with a mixture of things we already knew about, things we didn’t want to know about, and mildly disappointing reveals of previously announced games.
I found myself agreeing very much with GC’s review of the showcase and the idea that Sony was giving in to all its worst impulses, in terms of their famed arrogance and refusal to explain themselves. When Nintendo feels more open and approachable than PlayStation you know something has gone terribly wrong.
What I can’t help wondering though, is what Sony thought the response was going to be? Did they really think people were going to get excited about 60 second pre-rendered clips of a bunch of obnoxious looking online shooters? Especially when they’re probably all microtransaction-filled live service trash. Even the Spider-Man 2 footage was kind of disappointing. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it but it just didn’t seem very appealing… too orchestrated and fake seeming.
Some of the indie games looked good, but not only did they have nothing to do with Sony, and were also on Xbox, but a lot of them had been previously announced. There was just nothing to get excited or surprised about. Instead of a mic drop at the end they had Spider-Man 2, and they didn’t have The Last Of Us multiplayer at all. Frankly, I just want to get that out of the way, so Naughty Dog can get on with a proper game, but they’ve been dragging its reveal out for years.
Why wasn’t it shown? Where was the new games from Bluepoint and Media Molecule and Bend and everyone else? They must exist, you know that from simple logic, without even needing any insider information. Sony could have fired a golden bullet that secured them the generation and yet instead they fired a dud.
Except apparently Jim Ryan thinks it was all a great success and called it the ‘best and most varied catalogue of games possible.’ It’s not even a matter of opinion whether that’s true, it’s just not. The only game Sony showed that wasn’t a multiplayer online shooter was Spider-Man 2. That’s not varied, that’s the opposite of varied and it certainly wasn’t made up for by any third party games.
To be honest, it’s made me begin to lose faith in Sony. We all know they’ve got to where they are on the back of their first party exclusives and yet they seem to have got it into their heads that they’re going to throw that all away in favour of live service games scrambling after Fortnite money.
Has Sony learnt nothing from the last five years of Fortnite wannabes? There’s just no room for more than a couple of these types of games. People don’t have the time or money. And yet Sony had four of their own on Wednesday. (And none of them looked very interesting either.)
I just don’t understand anything they’re doing lately. They haven’t announced or released anything I’m interested in in over a year, except for God Of War, and I still have no idea what’s going to happened after Spider-Man 2 this year.
Don’t they know that people are getting worried and confused? I know I’m not the only one that is. Don’t they care that they’ve gone from releasing multiple games a year to almost nothing, hyping up the idea of maybe having up to two a year, as if that’s some great achievement.
I’m not going to make some asinine statement about selling my PlayStation 5 to get an Xbox Series X/S, I’m in too deep for that now. But I will be watching the Xbox showcase with great interest and when the decision comes between the PlayStation 6 and the Xbox Series Z (or whatever), that is when Sony’s problems will come home to roost, for me at least.
Not only do I no longer have any faith in their decisions, but I find their attitude to their fans increasingly disrespectful. They know we’re concerned and the grievances are entirely reasonable and yet the only response is to talk nonsense about the ‘best and most varied’ line-up ever.
The worst thing now is we’re back to having no idea when Sony is going to say anything important again. Surely they can’t have another showcase straight after Xbox, that would barely be two weeks after this one. So do we have to wait to the autumn? To this time next year? I just don’t understand what Sony is doing or why, and that does not inspire confidence.
By reader Oyster
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A reader is frustrated by the recent PlayStation Showcase and Sony’s attitude to its aftermath – and what that implies for the future.
