Games Inbox: Was the PS5 State of Play a disaster for PlayStation?

It gets worse
So the State of Play was exactly what was expected: a nothingburger with the only bright spot being Astro Bot. The only surprise, for me, was that Astro Bot looked even better than expected and Concord even worse. Concord was so bland and generic it almost could’ve been a parody trailer. I barely made it to the end.

I’m sure Sony isn’t going to listen to reason about not going overboard with live service games until they have multiple flops I a row, but if Concord is anywhere near as big as Helldivers 2 I’ll be shocked.

Where I do agree with Sony is that Astro Bot is not a ‘major’ franchise and that it probably won’t sell that 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 having any big selling exclusives, the State of Play had nothing. It felt more like a minor event from the spring, rather than Sony’s biggest reveal event of the year. They’ve got whenever they announce the PS5 Pro later this year, but I think it’s very obvious there’s never going to be a big event where they announce multiple first party exclusives.

It might not seem quite so bad at the moment, because we’re so used to these being non-events now, but when compared to Xbox’s showcase I think this is going to be another disaster for PlayStation.
Gambon

Best in Play
Concord looks, err… OK and that weird anime photo clicky thing has some bizarreness going on. A lot of it was completely fine, with Silent Hill looking far more stronger and faithful to the original.

I’d have said that was my favourite until the Astro Bot trailer, which looks completely bonkers and totally great, stole the title of ‘Best in Show’. Nice concrete release date too.

Overall, a reasonably entertaining State of Play
Wonk

Computer-generated
I expected nothing and the State of Play still managed to disappoint. Astro Bot looked good but everything else was offensively uninteresting. Easily the worst was Concord, which was such a bland-looking Overwatch clone even the trailer was boring to watch.

That dead-eyed look in all the characters’ faces was really bad and made the fact that they were desperately trying to be like Guardians Of The Galaxy all the worse.

Concord looked like it had been made by an AI, while the thing that made Astro Bot so good is that it looked like it’d be made by a human with some actual passion for what they’re doing. It’s worrying how rare that is becoming with Western made games and here it is the only Japanese-made game in Sony’s line-up being the one that looks like it has some real life to it.

I’m not super optimistic for the Xbox event but it’s obviously going to be better than PlayStation’s, which felt like Sony was only doing it for contractual reasons, not anything else.
Leccy

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Product of its time
I am quite far behind on Edge issues, and I am still reading one from last year, but this made me laugh they had a Time Extend feature for Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door for GameCube last year and even though this year is the 20 year anniversary of the GameCube release this year they still put this line in the article: ‘Flurrie, a diva actress whose character design is just one more reason we’re unlikely to see a Switch re-release any time soon.’

I thought that was humorous considering GameCentral has just reviewed the re-release on Switch!
Andrew J.
PS: Haven’t seen the Sora amiibo in stock yet but still checking each day.

GC: To be fair, it does seem unlikely even now.

Missing them all
I can’t recall you reviewing it, but I am assuming you have a PlayStation VR2 setup? I know someone wrote in last week about it, but I’ve just played the Rez X level in VR and it is just crazy – almost like a drug! One of the best levels of any game I’ve played

Plus, I’ve gone through the first El Gigante boss on Resident Evil 4 VR and it was the most intense boss fight I’ve ever gone through. Looking up at that giant and trying to shoot it in the head, and the Plagas on its back was nuts. VR is one of those experiences that sounds rubbish when you talk about it and like the X-Wing mission you just have to play it to understand how good it can be.
Simon

GC: We’ve reviewed many PlayStation VR2 games and Rez is probably our most re-reviewed game ever?

Previous reasons
Whilst I take the point made in the weekend Reader’s Feature, that games would ideally be no longer than 12 hours, there seems to be an overlooked reason why games have become so vast… the second-hand, 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 would make no money from any of those 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 that such games would hit the second-hand market (which would spell lost revenue for Ubisoft, etc.).

Given the above, it’s evidently more of a financial risk for publishers to release shorter games, however much more appealing that might be to us consumers. However, with the physical games market dying out somewhat, maybe there will be more scope for shorter games in future.
James Dixon

GC: That did used to be a reason, but the second-hand market is significantly smaller now than it was a decade ago, both because of the rise of digital and the much more limited number of outlets dealing with it.

Inevitable Destiny
So what happens if (more likely when) Destiny 2: The Final Shape doesn’t do well? Destiny 2 has been going downhill for years now and I really don’t see this expansion doing anything to reverse it.

I used to enjoy the game, but it lost its way and I don’t think they ever had a plan for it and were always making stuff up as they went – which has finally caught up to them. The problem is that now they’re owned by Sony and they’ve already all but threatened to shut them down. I expect more bad news before the autumn.
Magnus

Fairly hardcore
If half of Sony’s audience is PlayStation 4 owners, why did they stop making games for it? I’m not saying I want them to but I don’t understand what the business case is not to? The more things go south at the moment 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 at the moment, but in such a clumsy, poorly thought out way that it’s just making things even worse.

The problem as I see it, is that the whole concept behind consoles was cemented in the 16-bit era, when the PC was barely even a sideshow. Nowadays though almost everything is available on PC, and often straight away. It doesn’t always work as well, admittedly, but it’s all there and making it seem very pointless to own a console.

Maybe casual gamers aren’t as clued into this fact but looking at the numbers for consoles and PCs I’m not sure if that even matters anymore.

As far as I can see casual gamers still only ever 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 dealing with fairly hardcore gamers, and they definitely know all about the PC.

Microsoft are clearly already planning to go third party and I’m certain Sony won’t be that far behind. Maybe it’ll take them another generation or two to accept the truth but I’m not sure it’ll even take that long.
Brodie

Inbox also-rans
I can’t believe that there was no nod to Chicken Police in your Duck Detective review. That’s clucking criminal.
D Dubya

GC: We were more tempted to reference Duckman.

Silent Hill 2 was definitely looking a lot better in the latest trailer but I’m not convinced. The whole appeal of the game was having no idea what was going on and playing through it all again, even with better graphics and some new bits, seems like it’s going to loose that appeal.
Doshin

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The small print
New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content.

You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader’s Feature at any time via email or our Submit Stuff page, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot.