Gaming Inbox: Has the PS5 State of Play Been a Disaster for PlayStation?

It’s getting worse
The State of Play was therefore exactly what we expected: nothing good with the only positive point being Astro Bot. The only surprise, for me, was that Astro Bot was even better than expected and Concord even worse. Concord was so bland and generic that it almost could have been a parody trailer. I barely made it to the end.

I’m sure Sony won’t see reason to not go overboard with live service games until they have several flops in a row, but if Concord is as big as Helldivers 2, I’ll be shocked.

Where I agree with Sony is that Astro Bot isn’t a “major” franchise and it probably won’t sell as well. I hate to break it to them, but it’s no different for Silent Hill 2, which wasn’t even that big the first time around.

In terms of big-selling exclusives, State of Play had nothing. It felt more like a minor spring event than Sony’s biggest reveal event of the year. They’ve done this every time they announce the PS5 Pro later this year, but I think it’s very obvious that there will never be a big event where they announce multiple first-party exclusives.

This might not seem like such a big deal right now because we’re so used to these not being events, but compared to the Xbox showcase, I think this is going to be another disaster for PlayStation.
a leg

The best of the game
Concord looks, uh… OK and that weird anime photo clicking thing has a certain weirdness to it. Much of it was just fine, with Silent Hill feeling much stronger and true to the original.

I would have said it was my favorite until the Astro Bot trailer, which looks completely bonkers and totally awesome, stole the title of “Best in Show.” Nice concrete release date too.

Overall, a reasonably entertaining state of affairs
Total

Computer generated
I wasn’t expecting anything and State of Play still managed to disappoint. Astro Bot looked good but everything else was offensively uninteresting. Arguably the worst was Concord, which was such a bland Overwatch clone that even the trailer was boring to watch.

That dead look on all the characters’ faces was really bad and made the fact that they were desperately trying to be like the Guardians of the Galaxy even worse.

Concord looked like it was created by an AI, while what made Astro Bot so good was that it looked like it was created by a human with a real passion for what they do. It’s worrying how rare this is becoming with Western-made games and here it’s the only Japanese-made game in Sony’s lineup that seems to have any real life.

I’m not very optimistic about the Xbox event, but it will obviously be better than the PlayStation one, which made it seem like Sony was only doing it for contractual reasons, and nothing else.
Léccy

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Product of its time
I’m pretty far along on Edge issues, and I’m still reading one from last year, but it made me laugh, they had a Time Extend feature for Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door for GameCube last year last year and even though this year is the 20th anniversary of the GameCube’s release this year, they still put this line in the article: “Flurrie, a diva actress whose character design is just one reason moreover why it’s unlikely to see a re-release on Switch anytime soon.”

I found this humorous given that GameCentral just reviewed the re-release on Switch!
Andrew J.
PS: I haven’t seen the Sora amiibo in stock yet, but I’m still checking every day.

CG: To be honest, that seems unlikely even now.

I miss them all
I don’t remember you reviewing it, but I assume you have a PlayStation VR2 setup? I know someone wrote about this last week, but I just played the Rez X level in VR and it’s just crazy – almost like a drug! One of the best levels of any game I’ve played

Additionally, I faced the first boss of El Gigante on Resident Evil 4 VR and it was the most intense boss fight I have ever experienced. Watching this giant and trying to shoot him in the head, and the Plagas on his back, was crazy. VR is one of those experiences that seems lame when you talk about it and like the X-Wing mission, you only have to play it to understand how good it can be.
Simon

CG: We’ve reviewed many PlayStation VR2 games and Rez is probably our most reviewed game yet?

Previous reasons
Although I take into account the point raised in the Weekend Reader Article, that games would ideally last no more than 12 hours, there seems to be an overlooked reason why games have become so large… the second-hand and trade-in market. Publishers knew that people would buy a game and trade it in a week later if it was a short single-player campaign. Which meant they wouldn’t make any money from these CeX type sales.

It seems that in response to this, games like Assassin’s Creed were deliberately designed to take longer to complete, in order to delay the time when these games would hit the second-hand market (resulting in a loss of revenue for Ubisoft, etc.).

Given the above, it’s obviously more financially risky for publishers to release shorter games, even if it could be much more attractive to us consumers. However, with the market for physical games disappearing, there may be more opportunities for shorter games in the future.
James Dixon

CG: This used to be a reason, but the second-hand market is significantly smaller today than it was a decade ago, both because of the rise of digital and the many more limited number of points of sale that deal with it.

inevitable fate
So what happens if (more likely when) Destiny 2: The Final Shape doesn’t perform well? Destiny 2 has been in decline for years now and I really don’t see this expansion doing anything to reverse the trend.

I loved the game, but it lost its way and I don’t think they ever had a plan and were always making stuff up as they went along – which eventually caught up with them. The problem is that now they are owned by Sony and they have already practically threatened to shut them down. I expect more bad news before the fall.
Magnus

Pretty hardcore
If half of Sony’s audience is PlayStation 4 owners, why did they stop making games for that console? I’m not saying I want to, but I don’t understand why the business case doesn’t do it? The more things go wrong right now, the more it seems like the whole concept of console gaming doesn’t really make sense and needs to be completely rethought.

I guess that’s what PlayStation and Xbox are trying to do right now, but in such a clumsy and poorly thought out way that it only makes things worse.

The problem, in my opinion, is that the whole concept behind consoles was cemented in the 16-bit era, when the PC was even just an accessory. But today, almost everything is available on PC, and often immediately. It doesn’t always work as well, sure, but it’s all there and makes owning a console very unnecessary.

Maybe casual gamers aren’t as aware of this fact, but looking at the numbers for consoles and PC, I’m not sure it matters yet.

From what I can see, casual gamers still only play two or three games (Call Of Duty, Fortnite, and EA Sports FC, usually), so even when you’re talking about something like Halo or Spider-Man , you’re still already We’re dealing with some pretty hardcore gamers, and they certainly know everything about the PC.

Microsoft is clearly already considering going to a third party and I’m sure Sony won’t be that far behind. It may take them another generation or two to accept the truth, but I’m not sure it will take that long.
Brodie

Inbox also works
I can’t believe there wasn’t a nod to Chicken Police in your review of Duck Detective. It’s a criminal cackle.
D Dubya

CG: We were more tempted to reference Duckman.

Silent Hill 2 definitely looked much better in the last trailer but I’m not convinced. The whole appeal of the game was not having a clue what was going on and replaying it all again, even with better graphics and a few new elements it seems like it’s going to lose that appeal.
Doshi

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