Reaction: The PS5 Discourse Around State of Plays Is Becoming Draining – Push Square

GuestGuestLogin | Sign UpPush SquareGuestLogin or Sign UpThe state of playWe’re all for fair criticism, but the discourse around Sony’s State of Play livestreams is slowly beginning to grate.Before we get accused of being hypocrites, we’ll readily accept we’ve fed the narrative at times. We’ve opined the manufacturer’s overall lack of fan engagement, and the inconsistency between shows.Truthfully, we think the Japanese giant’s done a pretty poor job at establishing a livestream format which serves its intended purpose: enthuse PS5 fans.But we’ve also seen enough now to understand the company’s approach to its events, and how it wants to build hype for its games.The clue is in the name really: State of Play isn’t intended to be some all-encompassing blowout like PlayStation events of the past. Instead, it’s, quite literally, the state of play – the “current situation in an ongoing process”, to quote Google’s dictionary definition of the phrase.For years now there’s been a disconnect between what fans want and what Sony’s willing to deliver, and, unfortunately, it’s not operating in the way many of you want it to. With the demise of E3 and the lack of PS Showcases, the firm’s much more content giving you a taste than blowing its load.That was evident during this week’s livestream: the firm delivered an early look at Housemarque’s new title, Saros, but it kept the rest of its lineup in its pocket. That doesn’t mean Ghost of Yotei and Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet don’t exist, it just means they’re in different stages of their promotional cycle.This is perhaps best evidenced by Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, a title which Sony pitched as an important first-party release to shareholders this week. Age ratings suggest its release is imminent and Hideo Kojima has been publicly cutting trailers on social media, but its big unveiling is coming at SXSW in three weeks.Would the State of Play been better with the anticipated sequel included? Yes, but as alluded to above, it’s on a different timeline. The title will get more exposure at SXSW, and it means as PlayStation fans, the news never really dries.It’s also clear Sony doesn’t want to show games too early anymore. Yes, there are exceptions like Marvel’s Wolverine, but this time last year we didn’t even know the undisputed Game of the Year Astro Bot existed. We could have made assumptions based on Team ASOBI’s activity, of course, but there was a matter of months between the acclaimed platformer’s official announcement and its launch.Thus, if you’re making assumptions about PS5’s entire 2025 based on a single presentation in February, you’re doing it wrong. We understand there’s concern following the cancellation of Bend Studio and Bluepoint’s projects, but all this talk of first-party software droughts is premature; PS Studios just dominated the DICE Awards for its output in 2024.None of this is intended to dispel criticism entirely, of course – we’d generally agree that a more forthcoming and engaging PlayStation, like the one throughout the PS4 era, would be nice. But the company has simply changed tack, and as fans we probably need to accept that we too need to adapt.Because frankly it’s tedious seeing every single State of Play followed by the same dreary discourse; E3 2016 was nearly a decade ago, and no matter how passionately you feel about that format, Sony seemingly has no interest in returning to it.All the PS5 revealsIf you genuinely don’t like any of the content on display, then we’re sorry you feel that way. But the Japanese giant’s latest livestream was packed to bursting with more than 30 different titles – surely you could find at least one or two things that you liked.Perhaps it’s time to focus on what was there, rather than what wasn’t.Do we need to accept that Sony’s approach to presenting games is changing? Is the discourse surrounding State of Play becoming tiresome? How do you think PlayStation could improve their livestreams moving forward? Open your mind in the comments section below.About Sammy BarkerAs the Editor of Push Square, Sammy has over 15 years of experience analysing the world of PlayStation, from PS3 through PS5 and everything in between. He’s an expert on PS Studios and industry matters, as well as sports games and simulators. He also enjoys RPGs when he has the time to dedicate to them, and is a bit of a gacha whale.Comments 181People need to relax. Some new IP never hurt nobody.I thought it was really good! Without a doubt one of the best State of Plays! It’s easy to want more out of each of these but we got a ton of gameplay and dates.Expectations are the thief of joy.Removed – unconstructiveHonestly what they could do is just stop doing State of Play presentations and put a blog post with trailers of upcoming games. Then do focused presentations for Sony games when they are ready to be shown (kind of like Microsoft’s Developer Directs).Trailers of upcoming games still get out there and they’ll be excitement when there are presentations because we’ll know that they WILL be focused on first party games.They need to start showing more of their first party especially with all of the cancellations they have had in first party.Some people just set their expectations for the State of Plays way too high, and some people (trolls) will just complain anyway no matter what Sony show. If these games got shown in an Xbox show then it would be lauded, even over on Purexbox people are looking forward to a lot of the games shown but on here it’s mainly the opposite. Yet once they release and do well critically and sales wise then these haters seem to disappear.I just find Playstation gamers to be the most fickle, when Xbox and Nintendo show games their players get excited for them and give them a chance before bashing it, whereas the majority of Playstation players just moan and complain that the games they want weren’t shown. It’s like these State of Plays must show games that only cater to them.I for one thought the last SoP was excellent and showed some great third party games.The State of Play was a B+, people out here expecting Last of us 3, GoW 4 level announcements every single SoP, which is just not possible. Also there is a BIG difference between and State of Play and a Showcase.Edit: To all the people who said it was bad, tell me, what were expecting from it?Re-edit: Thinking more about it, I think the leak culture should hold most of the blame, it goads people, just look at that supposed GoW trilogy remaster was “meant” to be announced .I thought it was really good. Came online, ready to discuss and hear what everybody else thought and it was just non stop whining.Not going to bother anymore, just discuss it with one or two friends and leave it.That second paragraph was essential 😂But yes, it’s been tiring for a long time.Yeah E3 was a big part of it for me back in the day. The playstation events were also very good. I think it was the long gap between the last big sony event that contributed to the disappointment of that last state of play. Wasn’t good at all in my opinion.I think that standards for games are increasing because old games no longer get unplayable for newer gamers.Even a decade from now people will rather play Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk over the latest 7/10 game like AC or Avowed.I honestly feel for people who only want the AAA first party stuff. There was a wide array of genres and themes on display from all sizes of developers. Gamers say they want new IPs from different devs then deride them when shown. Criticism is of course valid (Sony have done a very poor job communicating progress of it’s studios) and welcome but as always, it’s the knee-jerk, angry reactions that come across as ridiculous – the very same drama queens that’ll start claiming that this article is trying to stifle any criticism ⤵️@nessisonett that’s extremely rich coming from you 😂 they address this in the article but you can choose to ignore it to remain angry.Edit: I’d also like to mention that I’m glad Push Square realises journalism is a big contributor the problem. It must be difficult knowing what to/what not to amplify. Just be careful of forming a bubble…People forget that E3, Gamescom and TGS were created in a different market. Developers literally saved their announcements for those shows because all eyes were on those days.On the modern world games can be announced at any time and shown to people at any time so the days of saving up your reveals all for one day in Spring or Summer is gone. Okay we have the Geoffs, but even so that hasn’t affected the ability for publishers or platform holders to just spread the news out.The problem is that everything is expected to have megaton level announcements, fed by leakers and others who feel the need to constantly tell us what is happening and sending people into fits of expectation instead of just letting things play out properly. Xdev weren’t exactly helping.Game development is long and complicated and teams are in the middle of projects or have had projects cancelled. Games are announced when they are ready to be announced.Anyone with sense would have realised DS2 wouldn’t be in SOP given its previous trailer and a a previously announced blowout happening in three weeks timeI feel the same every time the Free monthly PS plus games get announced.It doesn’t matter how good the games are, even when it includes a AAA title or 2…….. You can guarantee that the “no it’s a crap selection” runs away with the poll.People on here are either extremely entitled and difficult to please or they’re just completely unrealistic in what they expect from the serviceIt’s just draining reading constant negativityI feel a lot of people just set themselves up to be disappointed.Sure I would love to be surprised with something that a lot of us have been waiting for years, but the games shown at the State of Play looked really good and I’m really excited to play them, and a majority of them aren’t years and years away.CORRECTION: The discourse around most of gaming has become exhausting. There’s far too much doom mongering.But as for State of Play specifically I don’t know what expectations people had, but I went in with low expectations and was pleasantly surprised. Over 30 announcements of which at least half I was interested in, including some genuine surprises and several new IP. How is that bad?We all like different things but I can’t help but think that people need to correctly set their expectations or they are always going to be disappointed.No one hates video games more than gamers, so i’ve opted to remove myself from said discourse because of this. Personally I thought there was alot of cool stuff that I wanna buy and some slop I audibly groaned at, but this State of Play was pretty good all things considered.It’s also not lost on me that Sony ends these shows with a first party PS5 game that’ll come out within the next year as they’ve done with Astro Bot, Ghost of Yotei and now Housemarque’s next game.I agree in principle, but the media has a lot to answer for in this area. You reap what you sow.I guess people get disappointed because Sony changed its promotional tactics without explanation for the audience. I mean I get it and that’s why I watched the latest State of play as a PS owner to see what I’ll play on this machine the next year or so and not expecting it to be focused on PS Studios games. Watching it this way made me very satisfied and excited for a lot of games that was shown there.I’m not sure what people expect these days, apart from ‘way too much’.Solid SOP with two or three great highlights and, much as I’d like to will a Sony Santa Monica announcement into existence, I’ll take what’s next from Housemarque!@Khwarezm89 But Sony DID announce they were going to change their marketing to be closer to games releases. Which is a good thing imo.Yes, well… i am glad you understood you are feeding a monster for clicks.
But, yes, it’s been getting absolutely awful. The amount of vitriol in the internet for anything that is not perfection is exhausting. These kids are becoming impossible to please and life has nothing but disappointment in store for them. I hope they enjoy it. 🤷‍♂️Btw the State of play had nothing that interested me and i still ranked it average. It doesn’t have to appeal to me personally. I am not at a loss for what to play.I guess a lot of people here only play first-party games and staunchly refuse (to the point of revilement, even) everything else? Not a use-case that makes sense to me, but that’s okay.This was my first State of Play, so I’m keeping in mind that I’m unfamiliar with the format and likely not picking up details that others are. I’d probably be really interested in some of the games shown, except I have no idea which ones because so few of them showed any gameplay (and unfortunately those that did just don’t appeal to me, but at least I could tell with those). And it didn’t help that there wasn’t a lot of variety: mostly visually realistic people in apocalyptic settings.I’m not writing any of this to whine, because I understand not everything needs to be made for me and my tastes, but it’s hard to be interested when everything looks like the same game that I know almost nothing about.I wouldn’t get your knickers in a twist over other people’s opinions if they think its rubbish who cares move on, if they love it good for them. Either way you know your own truth and move forward.I agree and disagree. Dispute being pretty sour towards Sony a lot of the time, I do think these SoPs — at least for the last year — have been pretty good. Grated, a lot of the games shown look generic, but that’s more an issue with modern gaming than PlayStation specifically.However, I don’t think there’s much excuse for being SO coy with first party output. We’re in the middle of one of their most successful generations, yet only formally know what half their teams/partners are doing and have no gameplay of any of them. Would it have been that hard to get an update on Ghosts and Wolverine? Even just a gameplay tease? Soros looks cool, but did we need another no-gameplay, concept trailer? I understand they just aren’t ready for primetime yet, but that’s indicative of far more problems at PlayStation that we could be equally upset about.With that said, people do be complaining and nauseum. Again, I thought the showcase was exciting enough. And I’m a jaded, cynical *****.Counterpoint: Sony knows how to put on an exciting show. It chose not to, for whatever reason, so people are expressing disappointment, and that’s perfectly valid.If you enjoyed it, that’s fine. It’s also fine to point out that it exists in the context of a wider web of marketing.But this show, in my opinion, did a terrible job of speaking to people who haven’t bought in to the ecosystem or who have but maintain concerns.Sony doesn’t need to be protected from criticism. The people running these events need to figure out how to not disappoint their base.The thing i miss the most is the hype building for games. I dont mind not having a big show like E3 ( Game Fest doesnt even come close ) , but showing a game when its nearly done doesnt give much room for hyping up titles. Its just a trailer and sometimes a deep dive SoP and then the game releases. We now saw Intergalactic and Ghost 2 and prolly get another trailer close to release and thats basically it. I would prefer a short trailer every SoP showing progress and keeping the hype alive, but thats just me.First of all: this SoP was good. Alot of games to keep an eye on. However: it’s clear that since the beginning of the PS5 era there is a big difference in what Sony is pursuing and what most of the PS community wants. Sony increased their PS+ prices, they increased the cost for buying a PS console, existing PS+ customers can no longer renew their subscriptions with discounts, they temporarily removed the ability to turn in your PS Stars points for credits and they put an infinite of resources in flopped/mediocre live-service games that nobody wants, designed to squeeze every penny out of the gamer. They canceled TLOU Online, now they didnt want to make another Resistance game… Now we are getting another remaster for a game that wasn’t even good when it released, but now that it is trending Sony wants to yet again try to let you pay money for the same game a second time. It all became one money grab and yes companies need to make money. But the love for games and creating games for people is gone. Now it’s all calculated, one of the reasons we don’t see games anymore 2 years before release.It’s just the way things are now with our ridiculous internet culture. I have seen more whining and complaining in the last few years than I have in my entire 5 decades on Earth. They could make a game where Snake and Master Chief team up to fight Ash Williams and Jason Vorhees, and people will STILL complain about it. I’m so over it. We’ve had a lot of stinkers lately due to corporate greed, but we’ve also had some insanely brilliant games to play. I am so overloaded with new and exciting games I have a hard time when I sit down trying to figure out what to focus on.First of all, we don’t have to accept anything we don’t want too. The SOP wasn’t the worst I’ve ever seen, but the first half was full of updates on games that didn’t need it in a SOP. Tides of Annihilation, Mindseye, and Saros was all interesting, but the presence of only one first party game in a 40+ min long SOP is disappointing.No matter what Sony does, there are now enough people on the Internet who hate everything Sony does! And the fact that Sony is more successful than ever just makes these people angrier.the SoP was OK. Not a mega highlight but also not a complete disaster like most people want to portray.I actually liked the State of Play. Almost every game in the show was something I’m actually interested in playing. Lost Soul Aside looked great, Saros looks like it’s going be just as badass as Returnal. Tides of Annihilation looked awesome and is a new IP even though it’s a third party game. Mindseye looked good starring Lincoln Clay from Mafia 3.Onimusha looked great and it having the great Musashi Miyamoto as the main character is great.I don’t get the hate for the show at all. It’s just people who always want to see First Party games every State of Play when those are made for showcases which happen once or so a year. You got one First Party game in this State of Play and other games I’m sure Sony has partnered up with to promote or have as Timed Exclusives.So people just need to be patient and stop with the unnecessary hate. The show was good and had a variety of games.Sony did say it’s updates on games coming to PS5 this year(mainly) and that’s what they showed, they didn’t say first party at all. Good show all around and excited to play Lost Records next week on PS Plus Extra.There was some good games and i am a different type of PS user. I only come here for the exclusives. So the fact 94% of the show was multi plat games i was just so so on it. Nothing wrong with that per se, but those cancelled live service games are taking a toll on the PS5 pipeline. We last saw a small teaser of Wolverine back in 2021. Well and the leak, but that don’t count. We haven’t even seen a 20 second clip of gameplay yet. I don’t know, it’s just not exciting enough for me personally. But i know many that enjoyed the show and thats all that counts.I personally am very interested in the new games announced there. Some are really impressive. People complains a lot about the abundance of sequels and remakes, but won’t give a chance to new properties either.If it’s a showcase of games coming to PlayStation, we don’t just expect AAA big game announcements but games to get us hype for having a PS console. I’d rather we leave this up to publishers making the announcements rather than Sony.No one can control someone else’s expectations, but this State of Play was to show what 2025 would look like. To say that we can’t judge 2025 based on the first State of Play of the year is unrealistic and offputting.Doesn’t help that the marquee announcements get leaked like clockwork. No doubt in my mind that Metal Gear Solid 3’s release date was meant to turn heads but people just mindlessly gobbled the headline 2 days beforehand and said next, causing the actually curated reveal to lose all impact. On what planet does the imminent return of Metal Gear Solid elicit shrugged shoulders?If I was a dev, I would seriously hate to have my game broadcast on one of these things, only for the Internet to call it ***** because Sony hasn’t made a new Killzone in a while.Interesting article but I think in the second to last paragraph you mean change tack (not change tact)Folks just expect everything and they expect it immediately. Others just want to be grumpy.Sadly a lot of them have the Internet these days.You get one side that hates everything just because it’s on one particular box. The other side so blinkered that you could have a blank screen and they’d call it a revelation.I’m just happy to see new games. Do I like them all, no. But there is plenty on the way to guarantee I will like some of them. Which is what we want isn’t it, games we enjoy.My issue with State of Play is inconsistency, when Sony started the format they were quite dull affairs, but got better over the years. We haven’t had a showcase since May 2023 and honestly that wasn’t much better than a SoP, September 2021 was their last good big presentation. State of Plays seem to be their only connection to gamers currently and they had a couple of decent ones last year that felt like showcases.The latest sop I feel needed to be a big deal, the Playstation roadmap is a bit weak currently, Microsoft has a huge line up this year, nintendo has the Switch 2 and no doubt some great first party exclusives. If Sony won’t give us a showcase then we look at sop’s for our big newsI thought it sucked but I ain’t making a fuss about it. Got other things going on to worry aboutI really think Sony needs to run 2 separate ‘shows’ through the year, both called something different, so there is no confusion as to what to expect:That way everyone knows what they are expecting, and disappointment should be mitigated somewhat.@Weebleman I do wonder how some look at a game (or a presentation) they don’t like and immediately label it as “bad”. There’s a HUGE difference between not liking something personally and something being overall “bad” for everyone.I’ve not watched a video game show since E3 2019. Which is actually the first, and last, show I’d ever watched. I want my gaming to be fun. I don’t want gaming to become a bother or stressful. This is why I play games on easy if there’s not difficulty requirement for the platinum trophy. I play video games to relax and escape my already stressful real life. Getting caught up (and angry) over the business aspect of the industry is a self-inflicted wound.I know the PS staff does not have this luxury, but I just ignore it. Internet discourse over games has become ridiculous. So many games get such harsh reactions before they even come out, and the phrase “this is not for me, but I can see how it might appeal to others” seems to no longer exist.I like this community. I like hearing what others are playing this weekend. But otherwise I just like what I like and let the internet fight without me. I find it intensely dumb for the most part.You get the same negative reaction every time there’s a Nintendo Direct.Neither company used to be in the habit of doing hyped-up presentations like these throughout the year, and by starting that trend and announcing an event like this is around the corner, they imply to the fans that there’s going a lot of BIG NEWS they’ll want to hear.Really though, it’s just a boon to their marketing departments who would love people to pay constant attention to everything they’ve got in the pipeline. If there are a couple of games you’re excited for and not much more, was it worth your time or attention? Or might it be understandable to be somewhat critical of the slate of announcements you were enticed into sitting through?If anything, a certain amount of negativity is a natural reaction to this type of constant artificial hype generation becoming the norm. And whether I agree with a positive or negative take on something like this, I’m not sure how it became the prevailing attitude that everyone should shut up and be positive about a bunch of marketing announcements. The consumerism is kind of nauseating.I don’t really know how to feel about this. The arguments presented here are fine. They are. Sony’s changed. State of Play is not supposed to be E3. Etc.The problem is that none of this changes the fact that these State of Plays simply aren’t delivering what a lot of the most hardcore fans – i.e. the people who tune into these things – actually want. That’s evident from the reactions to them. So who’s in the wrong? The company for not catering to what their fans want or the fans for not treating what the company is presenting as was intended?I really get it from both sides, but ultimately, I gotta side with the fans. The onus is on Sony to deliver what their audience wants – the onus isn’t on the audience to accept whatever Sony provides.Personally, I quite like the drip feed of information. But I get why people don’t. A lot of people still want the banger after banger presentations of yesteryear and if Sony isn’t doing that – whatever the reason – nobody can be surprised when reactions are as they are.It should be noted, too, that perhaps Sony’s hand has been forced somewhat by the live service debacle. Perhaps they simply don’t have anything to show because they’ve spent years pumping money into that dead dog initiative. But either way the result is the same.They either pivot to bigger presentations – presumably less frequently – that are more stacked with first party titles to please their fanbase, or they do it their own way and keep annoying them.The discourse just highlights several things to me:1. A lot of gamers have become entitled and spoiled
2. People are still clamoring for 1st party exclusives on Playstation, even though there’s a ridiculous amount of quality games coming, including probably all of Microsofts games. ( I find this a bit tribal)
3. People that claim to be gamers have a strangely narrow taste in games (Ok, that’s not proven, but sometimes it seems that way)
4.People don’t give a darn about new IPs, even if it could be the next big hit
5. People for some reason want close to everything shown to be up their street. (which is generally unrealisitic)Now, people will counter with ‘we don’t need to like it’ and that’s true, ya totally can. I just get it. There’s enough quality games to last me more than my lifetime, the only thing that annoys me is I’ll be dead before i get a chance to play them all.
We’re all on limited time, can anyone here truly tell me there’s not going to be enough quality games to keep you going for life? I doubt it. I’m happy with what we’re getting, I don’t care about what Sony have put out this generation. I have enough.Plenty of games shown. Some I’m interested in , some I’m not. Same as any show for any box.The live service cancellation can’t be corrected over night.We know the studios are working on games. They aren’t sitting there picking their noses. But what use is showing a game that’s releasing in 2-3yrs? – Microsoft did this and it didn’t work.Look at Astro, announced only a couple of months prior. Yet team Asobi would have been working away a while. It built up hypeI just wanted Sony to mention Ghost and DS2. I didn’t necessarily need a trailer. I just want them to keep the excitement going. I mean, if Borderlands is getting a State of Play, surely just saying “I know you want this, and you’ll love what you see, but you’ll see that soon” would’ve helped. I think there’s been more games than ever that have been announced and haven’t seen any new info in a long time that people expect different games than the ones that are getting release dates as well.Here’s some questions: If Mafia releases in summer, for instance, why did its release date not get announced but Borderlands did (sorry to keep pouncing on Borderlands)? Where is Pragmata, Little Devil Inside, Wolverine, KOTOR, Judas, Marathon, etc? Why did rumors like GoW Remastered or Gummy Bears run rampant? Why weren’t the new Astro Bot levels in the State of Play, but announced the day after? Why did Nightreign get an info dump hours before SOP? Who was asking for a Days Gone Remaster? (The same people that wanted an Until Dawn one or Lego Horizons?)It’s things like this that that I think are causing the issues combined with a few years of poor communication, fewer first party titles, and a truly misguided announcement to take a deep turn into live service games. We are all part of the ecosystem for a reason and I’ve no doubt almost everyone on this site loves PlayStation, but I do think that there’s a lot of people dissatisfied with State of Plays currently because they want something intrinsically different from what Sony thinks the fanbase wants.I don’t think it’s that people want more games announced at these things either, but more communication from Sony. And trust.@johncalmc I’ve kept quiet on it until today, but I consider myself a hardcore fan and I was happy with what we got. I know there’ll be online metrics probably expressing dislike etc. But i think it’s fair to say there’ll be plenty of big fans who don’t engage socially on the internet. I generally don’t apart from the odd message on here. I generally find most internet discourse and discussion just becomes fruitless because people argue their points ‘loudly’ and stubbornly in an infinite, pointless loop. Yet here I am.
I don’t think being hardcore always equates to thumbs downing and so forth. I suppose we have nothing else to tell us.I think you’re right about the live-service debacle, defintely set Sony back years. But when we’ve got Ghost of Yotei, Death Stranding 2, Intergalactic, Saros and Wolverine in the pipeline I can’t get too down.I’m happy having seen these games already, enough to get me hyped.Funny thing is , I might have been disappointed if the big trailer was DS2 again. I’ve seen to ultra long trailers of that already.@PsBoxSwitchOwner “The live service cancellation can’t be corrected over night” and yet people cannot see that…What people seem to forget about those glorious Playstation E3 days is that they were willing to show off games that would sometimes be 3-4 years away. I personally loved getting a look at games coming much further down the road but the majority seemed to hate it.So fast forward to now and at most they generally only show off games if they are a year or two away and now people complain that they don’t show enough.You can’t have it both ways.Then there is also the problem of people only caring about 1st party games. Look I love me some Uncharted as much as the next guy but there are other great options out there in the 2nd/3rd party space.There was some genuinely great stuff at this recent SoP. Get out of your comfort zone a bit and explore. Don’t just die on that Bloodborne Remake/Remaster/Sequel hill. Otherwise you are just going to be miserable watching all these things.@__Seraph This is also a very valid argument. People are much more likely to go online to say their piece if they’re annoyed than if they’re merely content or ambivalent. And so the discourse is certainly skewed because of that. I too am a hardcore PlayStation gamer and while I think State of Play varies in quality and is rarely better than pretty good, I certainly don’t think many of them are anywhere near bad enough to warrant the reaction they get.If you couldn’t find something to enjoy then maybe it’s time to rethink your hobbies. There were at least 4 or 5 games I found very interesting and will be excited to play in the future. Sometimes I think Playstation fans are the worst and don’t understand how popular the system is. I’ve never understood the toxicity around gaming in general. It’s baffling. And creepy.@awp69 they need to do these shows for their 3rd party partnerships especially the AAA ones.I thought it was a great show. Sure, I would love every 1st party livestream to visit all their internal devs, but that timeline is over. If most studios are only going to release 1 or 2 games the entire generation, we aren’t going to see them until Sony is confident they will actually release – see Bend and Bluepoint.I’ve come to accept that these showcases are no longer for people like me. For those that enjoyed the non dark and gritty PlayStation. The PlayStation that didn’t want to make each game a movie experience.I’m just happy with my indies and the odd Astro Bot release.@Clytorial_Impact I honestly walked away thinking I need to play/purchase atleast 10 of those games. Great show imoSony just don’t care about it players at all and the last few state of plays have been awful they have put thereselfs in this situation with going for the live crappy service approach to make more money hopefully now they realise we don’t want that crap and start releasing single player quality games like they are renound for@Loamy it’s such a weird mindest isn’t it. Avowed isn’t really peaking my interest but I can appreciate it’s still a decent game. I may try it at some point and still think it’s not for me. I may end up loving it. These people must miss out on so much.The absolute key is Sony (or many publishers) not wanting to show games too early. Why do people want to know about something they won’t see for 2+ years, anyway? We know about Ghost of Yotei and DS2 already. The most information we’ll get now before late this year is more info about those two games.@Lowdefal Very well said, friendI mean, when “Captured on PC” is what’s written at the beginning of one of the PLAYSTATION State of Play trailers, it’s hard to take the event seriouslyIt’s not only about what they show, but also what they don’t show. PlayStation fans want PS Studio games, especially single player ones. Of some 20 (?) games, only 1 (one!) was a new game, another a remaster of a game which already runs great on PS5.So what didn’t we see? New single player games from Bend, Bluepoint, Media Molecule. And we know the reason…I mean how grating is it for this site? You tend to embelish the discourse every single time in multiple articles and surveys, all that feed you clicks, including this article. For me personally their hit and miss, some have been great, some have been underwhelming, it’s not life or death…but for some ppl, they will treat it as such, I’ve learned to ignore the noise.I feel like I’m a bit old fashioned, but I hate seeing games too close to release, I miss the days of long build up, breaking down trailers for weeks with the community and nailing down releases years down the line as something exciting to look to.That kinda grandeur is gone from current PS, and for sure there’s positives to that, but for my own personal taste, current Sony is just lacking that special sauce that made the last generation so damn iconic.The bar I set for State of Plays from Sony is extremely low. And yet I ALWAYS walk away disappointed. They deserve all the criticism they are getting for that presentation. “Boohooo, stop picking on PlayStation…. waaahhh!”As a longtime, older gamer, but new to PS, I don’t know what the purpose of the SOP is, so it’s hard to set expectations accordingly. Both MS and Sony make decisions that baffle me, but regardless of the aim of the SOP, I just can’t wrap my head around them not mentioning the FREE Astro Bot DLC that was about to drop the next day!Xbox made a lot of mistakes, but their developer directs are now spot on, 3 or 4 games, proper deep dive and they’re games coming out SOON!Switch do third party directs, and that’s what this SOP largely felt like to me.SOP was a rather soulless slideshow of 3rd party games, all rather impersonal… I love how Yoshiaki Koizumi presents the Nintendo directs Leave multibillion company alone!Anyway.Since I don’t play godowars/horizons/lastofus and love ninja gaiden-ish 3d slashers, I genuinely enjoyed last SoP. I just don’t need to validate my enjoyment.@ArcadeSixties honestly what type of games do you like? I wasn’t interested in the majority of those games but I walked away with atleast 10 of the 30 games shown that I will play/purchase.They should try not sucking then as ArcadeSixties mentioned above I also go into State Of Plays with immeasurably low expectations everytime and am still let down these shows suck I miss the days of old when we had the like 3 big things a year (E3, Gamescom, TGS) and the companies showed up with awesome stuff to show now it’s just silence and these pieces of crap every few months with basically no 1st party stuff yeah big 3rd party reveals have always been apart of the big 3’s game showcases and they should be but I’m sorry it’s a dumb notion that PlayStation fans going into a Playstation game showcase expecting to see 1st party Playstation games and expressing disappointment when once again there basically aren’t any is somehow whinny entitlement. Toxic positivity does no favours if you don’t call the company out when they’re messing up they’ll continue to suck because people are basically telling it’s ok that they’re not delivering no one wins in that situation.Another thing that’s incredibly draining is the constant nagging about a Bloodborne remaster/sequel.Sony and their partners have released games for the PS5, but in reality I’ve only enjoyed Astrobot, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and Eiyuden Chronicles as new games for the PS5 this generation. I enjoy fun, weird, bright games with a bit of humour in them.The PS5 has not lived up to previous generations for variety and innovation, and that’s why I find myself dismayed about the state of the console. If they want people like me to keep playing on Sony platforms, they need to broaden their product variety.I am just waiting for a Patapon reboot 😂But for this SoP, there was nothing ‘new’ (unknown about) that got me super excitedAt the moment the only game I play on my PS5 is GT7 multiplayer.Simply due to non of the big name games being appealing enough to me to get them at full price. There are a few I may pick up in sales down the line but even then it’s not that many.My taste in games has just moved in a different direction to what Sony & PlayStation are putting out at the moments.The discourse can’t be that grating if they have left the comments open to be fair hahaI was waiting for this article, because, Jesus Christ, it had to be said.The State of Play was perfectly fine; and i refuse to believe that gamers truly want 30 games all perfectly catered to hype up everyone across every demographic. Forget 1 or 2 games i like for 2025, i still have games in 2023 and 2024 i still havent gotten to 😂The problem with their shows recently is that Sony are so quiet, when they finally do say something you expect it to be worth while. But what we usually get amounts to about a blog post. Sony made this problem for themselves having no shows at all or poor shows for years now. It’s not the fans fault they are failing to deliver. Hopefully in the summer they have something worthwhile to show us, even if it’s not all first party. The shows need to be betterRemoved – discussing moderation@nessisonett trying to get another comment deleted? 🤣(I had it happen to me for the same reason a few months back lol)@Sakai I mean, headlines on this site like “Sony XDEV urges fans to tune in to state of play” etc will create some expectations. After that, I expected some exciting announcements. Lots of these multi platform games shown look good, but I expected more than I saw, based on the hype Sony themselves created…with so much negative Sony press recently around years of wasted dev time on live service, lots of job losses, we then have an SOP announced, that feels like a positive reaction to all the negativity. Sony staff themselves URGING us to watch… then it’s all so mid…@janineking You sir or madam are awesome because you have Dogs daughter from Blue Stinger as your avatar. Now that’s a game I’d love to be remade!!!!Numerous titles piqued my interest. I thought it was their best SoP in ages. To each their own.The September ’24 SoP was very good. This one wasn’t, largely thanks to the Jim Ryan era’s godawful 1st party strategy.Sony should just delay these whenever they find themselves padding them with crumbs of new info on already-announced titles or eslop-adjacent anime crap.I’m new to Sony, if it was clear, it was known, that they had 1 or 2 big shows a year that focus on first party, then 1 or 2 on third party games, you’d know what to expect and this could all be avoided!!If Sony actually bothered with actual Showcases it would be easier to stomach SoP like this but as it this is all we get from them and its tiring especially when MS are an open book with their releases.I do agree that the State of Plays clearly aren’t the big showcases that people want them to be, and you enjoy them far more if you take them for what they are. Frankly that applies to all of life, but back on topic…That said, there’s also a reason why people are so unforgiving that SoPs aren’t showcases, that’s because PlayStation aren’t HAVING and showcases. They’ve not actually had many proper ones at all in recent years. Good or not, it’s forced players to keep their hopes up that the next SoP will be the big one, even when it’s clearly not.Say what you like about Xbox, but even during their quiet years of 2020,2021, they still had proper showcases. And importantly since 2022 they’ve had alot of good stuff to show in them. Consistently. Year after year. Even with half of their games set for multiplatform releases this year, they’re still putting out more first party exclusives that we know about. (Even if they’re inevitably timed)Next to that, you can’t blame players for wanting some of the same from Sony again.@PCPS4XB we want exclusives not 3rd party games this state of play was awful it’s that simple@Stale-Bread thank you and agreed !I would add that the May 2023 Showcase was a profoundly dispiriting dumpster fire & Sony is going to continue to get grief from PS5 fans until they present something that makes the future of the PS5/PS6 seem brighter@Lysterao Funny how in-development Xbox games count but Sony’s don’t. Every time someone lists what’s being worked on by PlayStation Studios, people here argue that none of them count.Good-faith criticism is one thing, but goalpost-moving and disinformation are another.Sony: this is your state of play but your only getting what our suits upstairs say your getting, enjoy!The SOP was good and had plenty of games that interested me, of the top of my head I wanna say about 8. Then it had a few more that I could swing towards with more info.The problem is people are expecting studios to drop 1st party games like its past generations and thats simply not viable with modern development cycles. Studios can drop about 1-2 AAA games per generation now, maybe 3 if they are smaller.Its exhausting just hearing the same nonsense that only 1st party matters, when in reality they are a tiny portion of the market.Sony could announce every game that’s in development for the next 10 years during a single state of play and the discourse would still be negative. I’ve stopped caring what the allegedly hard-core opinion is at this point because usually it’s just miserable for the sake of being miserable.The one thing that irked me most about the sop was the complete lack of Platform games as usual….The promo pix that included an Ape Escape monkey made my heart soar…only to find out they were referring to a mode in Metal Gear remake..sigh…Have Sony and partners learned nothing from the phenomenon that is Astrobot?…Who by the way they couldn’t even be bothered to mention the new free to play levels which started launching on the same day…Le sighs again🙄Yes stop with complaining Sony sucks so much since the beginning of this generation.Let’s praise all the mediocrity and mainstream crap. Beyond me how people can’t be disappointed by Sony for years nowAnd no that doesn’t mean “I should go somewhere else” or something. I love Sony that’s why I am disappointed.You’re not disappointed when you don’t care anyway.It was a pretty good state of play.Wasn’t expecting Ape Escape to be included in the PS5 version of the Snake Eater remake which is a welcome surprise. Hoping for a Ape Escape Remake/ Remastered trilogy to be announced later on in the yearI’m sorry but it was just bad. I didn’t go into it actually expecting Bloodborne, GTA6 or a Halo Collection reveal.I just wanted to see something that hadn’t been announced yet, that looked fun to play and isn’t a year away from coming out.The last State Of Play did not deliver that. Tides Of Annihilation was the only thing that interested me and even that didn’t exactly blow me away.I thought this state of play was probably one of the best they have made so far. Lots of anticipating games too, if they would have dropped their ghost of yotei and death stranding 2 in the same show it would have been really really good. I think they surely could have made a couple of mins videos to show the games. But I’m happy with what it is, however I will always miss the hype of E3.This is more of a current society problem than anything else, the internet/social media generations with the entitled “i want it and i want it now, and plenty of it” brats and neckbeards that unfortunately populate our webspaces and most vocal with it. ❤️@Pedski The fact Astro Bot had a main level themed on Ape Escape and the new Metal Gear Solid has an Ape Escape mode hopefully means theres a new one on the way. This is Sony’s way of early marketing and getting people interested before it’s announcement. Well, atleast that’s what I hope it is.I thought the SoP was pretty good tbh. Directive 8020, Secrets of the Minic, Tides of Annihilation all looked good. but even so i think sony needs a unified format and be more transparent about what’s gonna be in these streams. I would call it PlayStation Presents.and all and all, we’re gonna have to accept that both Sony and times have changed.@Dan12836666 speak for yourself, I’m fine with both and this show just gave me notice to work a few extra OT shifts because this yr is stacked lol. I understand your pov though.@PCPS4XB fair enough it’s good we all have different opinions obviously we all like different kind of games as well 👍Ah yes a cinematic trailer for a game.coming next year is all we got from PlayStation first part studio, I can see why people are annoyedThis current state of play was just fine..cry babies gonna cry when they don’t see the game they hoped to see. Just check out the next one.I think this article is quite condescending and patronising. People are allowed to voice their opinions on something they’ve spent their hard earned time and money on.I didn’t think the State of Play was bad at all but those who did have just as much right to speak up if they want to.I don’t know, seemed like a pretty solid State of Play to me. There were some interesting games for sure.We have no control over this, just accept things as they are, find something positive and move on.I do think that the Housemarque game would’ve benefitted from some gameplay. I mean, they’re known for their intense action (not to mention pretty particles). Showing a cinematic trailer was pretty lame.I thought it was okay. A few games looked cool and that’s enough for me. But ironically the biggest defenders of current Sony and this SOP come off as the biggest crybabies rather than the critics. Every critic I see is pretty much “yeah mid lol, where was x game?”.Everyone else who says they loved it can’t help but be passive aggressive towards anyone who would hypothetically think differently. All these comments including this article just comes off as insecure like you all can’t enjoy it truly because you NEED everyone else to agree. Who cares? If you like it go like it and voice your enjoyment and move on. Complaining that people don’t share the same perspective is just brat behavior.I came with low expectation and i thought this month SoP was exceeded my expectations. There’s no live service games and it just single player after single player games + new IP. I saw plenty of interesting games for my wishlist from Shinobi, Onimusha 2 HD & Way of the Sword, Saros, Tides of Anihilation, Lies of P DLC, Mindseye, etc. I’m not even sure if i have enough money to buy and play all of them on day 1.I honestly could careless why some people keeps crying and complaining. If they think Sony didn’t provide them with games that fit with their taste / standard anymore then they should just moved on from PS and try other platforms. It’s not like Nintendo, Xbox, PC, or mobile doesn’t exist 🤷‍♂️I just want to enjoy games on my PS console and so far i got what i want.I enjoy hearing about games that I otherwise never would’ve known about. Btw, I would dispute Astro Bot’s GotY status.Maybe take a little break from being a PlayStation website with a comment section if you find it all so dreadfully draining.Has there been a first party game announcement that got every fan excited on the level of Last Of Us 2, God Of War or Uncharted from from previous gen? 🤔 Ghost Of Yotei is the one for me, but I’ve seen that some didn’t like itIt’s a problem on Sony’s part.
Yes, there is a difference between Showcase and State of Play. But it’s obvious that even Sony doesn’t know the difference. Because they are putting huge first party games reveals (Ghost of Yotei, Physint, Saros) in State of Play. And that obviously creates expectations for every future State of Play.
Also it didn’t help that they ignored Showcase for two years.Also, they have insuficient number of studios for game industry where making AAA game takes 5-6 years. Combining it with disastrous pivot to live service where many studios had to scrap years of work, it just feels dry in terms of first party.Say whatever you want about Xbox, but since they hired that former IGN chap (Tina Amini, I think), format of their showcases have been excellent. You know that Developer_Direct focuses on deep dives into few games. You know that Partner Preview is just about third-party games. And you know that every year you will get huge Showcase in June with new announcement. Plus smaller showcases during TGS and Gamescom with potential of having something during The Game Awards. It’s clear, understandable and most importantly, it manages expectations. And that’s exactly what current Sony’s showcases are lacking.Just have an indie state of play and a major third party state of play. Sets expectations immediately.Those reactions aren’t so much about Sony’s shows, as it is about Sony’s attitude towards it’s in-house games and towards us as clients.They wasted a couple of years and billions of $ investing in GaaS games, and now that that (predictably) imploded, they are trying to pick up where they left off with the games that brought them their success.
I get the reason, doesn’t mean I like it, or that I have to forget it happened. It was a gross management error, that won’t be easily forgotten…. or forgiven… especially by the fans of their epic in-house SP games.Sony has built a huge fanbase for years around it’s SP games, only for it suddenly to throw it in the trash and go hunting for life service unicorns instead.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean “GaaS BAD” – just not GaaS 95%, the rest of the games – whatever!
They must strike a balance, compromise!
Don’t cut the chord abruptly and go cold turkey, they must find a way include 1 or 2 GaaS titles into the game development “machine” instead of ignoring almost completely what many of their existing clients want and expect!What they did was a mistake that cost more than half the life of the PS5 in this regard (in-house SP games), and it will take at least the rest of it’s lifecycle to get back on track with them.Until then, some fans will be more bitter than others…
It’s unavoidable, unfortunately, simply because trust and respect will NOT be rebuilt/regained overnight, no matter how much others disagree.
It will pass , of course.
But it will take at least 1 more year for that to happen, and only IF, and I stress the IF… Sony shows, bit by bit, sure, but constantly, that it understood the message and it steers in the direction it’s clients want.Including at least 1 game from their own studios in every State of Play is a good step forward, for example. We’ll see if they stick to it, and maybe even up the ante in this year’s Showcase.I honestly find it more draining that some people, including who wrote this piece, just can’t take ANY criticism to the brand, they just feel the constant need to say you’re wrong and you should be grateful for what you saw instead of just accepting different opinions, like what’s the point of this article? It’s only creating more and more discourse between fans, because we always seem to be wrong, never ever Sony.@Americansamurai1 genuine question here: are you a bot? Did you not read the article?Also did you not see that in the past 4-5 months Sony has announced 3 AAA first-party titles from highly acclaimed studios?They also just delivered a GOTY recently and are about to ramp up promotion on Death Stranding 2. I feel like the first-party concern trolling is getting out of hand.Just say you don’t care for the games and move on. Its annoying to constantly see people ***** on playstation because of their own entitlement. Please find new material to be mad at.Sounds like you’re just simping for them. I mean, you’re a primarily Playstation focused website. I don’t think you can really comment from any kind of believable non-bias.The main issue I have with Sony if they’ve spent so long mucking around with stuff people are clearly saying they don’t want, (GaaS) that they’ve fallen behind making any GREAT games. Their SoP just seemed like a middle ground of “been there, done that”. Total lack of innovation or interesting games at all. They are stagnant as they’ve been chasing the GaaS Fairy for so long and remastering games that don’t require remastering, they’ve forgotten how to make a good game and get people excited for them.@ButterySmooth30FPS You’re projecting mate. I never said they don’t count. I’m just talking about this year, and so far, announced, PS only have a single first party game announced. Now they might have more this year and I hope so, but otherwise it’s 2026 and beyond we have to wait for.You want to talk about goalpost shifting, no one was happy with Xbox for being “in development” for all those years either, despite clearly being in rebuild mode since 2018 when they finally got support to build up again. Fair enough from a player perspective, being asked to wait faithfully while the 6 years or so for AAA development cycle works it’s way through to producing frequent games is a big ask. Rightfully too big for many players. But that’s where PS are now. Personally I’m happy to wait for them to take the time they need to develop. Even for the teams like Bluepoint or Bend who just wasted years on Live Service, because i know they can deliver given the right direction, just like I also waited for Xbox, and am now pretty happy with their output again. It’s the optics that are just as bad for them as they were for Xbox. I’m just pointing out WHY players are seemingly so rabid for a proper showcase, not claiming Sony don’t have anything coming. They do. Besides, their release cycles have always clustered towards the beginning and end of generations anyway. Begin by driving console sales, then capitalise on maximum install base, it’s nothing new and a smart strategy. Just way over the head of the average SoP viewer.Have you ever thought that maybe This discourse exists because The Direction PlayStation took their platform this generation is just ***** and draining in itself?It’s frankly even more draining to see so many not defend Gamers but instead defend the corporation, and it’s profits because there’s financial interest to do so or one is stuck in some bizarre brand Allegiant echo chamber that you cannot get out of or disassociate from enough to consider fair criticism….@IOI exactly@IOI It’s not about criticism of the brand, it’s about people’s doomerism fueling false narratives and concern-trolling.@Lysterao They have 3 for 2025: Ghost of Yotei and Death Stranding 2 (financed and published by PlayStation studios, referred to as first-party by Sony themselves), and Lost Soul Aside (same situation as DS2). This is the kind of disinformation I’m talking about!Gamers before SOP: We want fresh and exciting new IP’s!Gamers after SOP: Wait where are insert big brand name hereI swear gamers don’t know what the hell they want these days which is why I rarely interact with the community and because I don’t want to get dragged down with the discourse.Also, negativity sells.@ButterySmooth30FPS that’s the point though that he was trying to make is like if you really think about it everyone uses that excuse that it’s trolling or it’s Doom and Gloom when a lot of times it’s fair criticism. Sure there’s a few times when it’s clear it’s not but whenever someone offers Fair criticism and continues to be consistent with that on sites like this they’re labeled as negative and/or toxic when really they’re just sticking to the same criticism they’ve had for the entire generation. This idea that it’s not okay to criticize because of this bizarre brand Allegiant Echo chamber is not good for gaming it’s not good for gamers it’s genuinely not good for PlayStation either.There’s no room for improvement if you can see Sony as being able to do no wrong it’s absurd to think that way@ButterySmooth30FPS Thanks for exemplifying it, there’s lots of comments doing valid criticisms in this very thread, yet you invalidate it as ‘doomerism’ and ‘trolling’, exactly my point.@IOI If one has to bend reality and make up false things in order to make themselves feel worse, that is textbook doomerism.The problem is that the state of play very often doesn’t really show off much. I am watching the state of play to see if there is anything you might be remotely interested in playing, and there is very little I am interested in. If the state of play is showing off supermarket simulator, then Sony is clearly doing something wrong.I’m the maddest I’ve ever been!!!!!Being someone that was normally on the Xbox and Nintendo sister sites more than here for years unfortunately I think the same process is happening to PlayStation.A few 1st party games get cancelled or not shown for almost a year or more and people start to panic and cannot find any other 1st party games to look forward to release in the short-term and become disenfranchised with the brand, the company, the platform and the “box”.I for one have been in this process with Xbox but primarily due to lack/weak physical games support and lack of mass adoption of Play Anywhere while enforcing digital games primarily for their platform.Take some time away sites/forums, research games your are really interested in, or play an old favorite while time passes. PlayStation seems still focused on new IP and old IP but new AAA entries take 4-7 years to happen. It just is how this industry is now. Something we all have to deal with.I thought it was borderline poor. I own a PS5, PS5 Pro and Portal. I’m all in on Sony and I was disappointed.It felt it was lacking something! I cannot put my finger on it. Maybe expectations was too high!@Americansamurai1 Agreed!There weren’t any turn-based RPGs, so it sucked… or whatever… but then Daybreak 2 came out two days later, so who actually cares. The funny part of all the “where are the first-party games?” discourse is that I realize I haven’t REALLY cared at all about Sony’s first-party games since Legend of Dragoon. I suppose I will just have to keep being salty for another decade or two. Buy why, there are so many other great games to play?@KeanuReaves not a bot just don’t worship everything Sony does like some fanboys on here. They show three games but no gameplay at all. They’ve released one new first party single player game last year when they have like 15 studios with multiple teams. Keep worshipping Sony as they keep releasing remasters, canceling live service titles, and closing studios as for me I will criticize them when I don’t like the direction they’re going. Also take you own advice and if you don’t like my comment move on instead of trying defend a corporation that doesn’t even know you exist.Fair criticism is fine, as the article states. What it’s actually calling out are the pervasive false narratives that do nothing but shut down constructive community engagement. Somehow, a middle of the road state of play suddenly turns into:!!!There’s no good games anymore and this gen is a joke and this is what happens with no competition and Sony is an evil empire and if you like anything they do you’re a bootlicking simp who doesn’t actually know what a good video game is and capitalism!!!It’s exhausting, as per the article. And there are plenty of reasonable, middle ground takes that get left untyped because it’s alienating to come here as a video game lover and be made to feel miserable for it.@Jimmer-jammer Thank you for getting it! Another example of what you typed about is the commenters who interpreted this article as “Don’t criticize Sony!”There is just a lot of negativity in almost every comment section on this site now. Over the past few years it’s been gradually getting worse.I love video games, it’s easily my favourite hobby, but coming here, you would think it’s about to end.The pivot to and then away from live service has obviously impacted their output.That said, there’s still a mountain of games I want to get, there’s still a mountain of games in my backlog that haven’t been touched, plus games are bigger than ever.Sure, the Megadrive had more bangers in 1992 than the PS5 did in 2024, but you can clock Streets of Rage 2 in about an hour.I need more hours in the day, not more gargantuan games polished to perfection.@ButterySmooth30FPS Bang on, my friend.@ButterySmooth30FPS Except two of those aren’t first party are they. I mean, it’s all definitions at the end of the day, but they’re not coming from first party studios.Same way no one would count Ninja Gaiden 4 as Xbox 1st party.@Lysterao Sony counts them, why shouldn’t we?@Americansamurai1 I was directly criticizing your concern trolling. Instead you started attacking my character by implying I was defending a “corporation that doesn’t know” i exist.Its very easy to dismiss criticism isn’t it? Just pretend that I didn’t have a point and attack me as a person instead. Pathetic.@charbtronic Unless that new IP is called ‘Concord’ ?So for me personally, Sony has done an awful job during this PS5 generation. We’ve gotten enough remasters and remakes to last a lifetime lol (although certain games like The Last of Us Part 1 deserved a remake imo). I also feel like we’re still feeling the fallout from Sony’s failed live service pivot. We have a cancellation of God of War Live Service, Last of Us LS, Spiderman LS, Concord LS and whatever Bend Studio was working on. I feel like that’s a lot of resources (time, Money, and effort) down the drain.Making a successful live service game is tough. It takes great gameplay, an active community, regular updates, and a smart way to make money. I think that Sony might not have realized how hard this is. Even world class studios like Naughty Dog had to throw in the towel and say, “hey this isn’t for us, this isn’t what we as a studio do.”I also think PlayStation may have misread the Market and the appetite PlayStation owners have for live service games. Sony is known for its single-player games, with them diverting resources they may have overestimated how many of Us PlayStation owners actually wanted live service games, especially if it meant fewer of the story-driven games that people like myself purchased a PS5 for in the 1st place.Moving forward my hope is Sony starts to really drop the hammer with what they do best, making phenomenal blockbuster single player games. I’m not saying NEVER make a live service game, but putting 60% of resources into live service with only 40% reserved for their single player exclusives that PlayStation fans know and love was probably a bad call.I want to see games, I want Playstation to show me the games I’ve been yearning for. Ghost of Yotei, Intergalactic: the Heretic Prophet, Marvels Wolverine, Insomniac’s Venom game, Bungies Marathon, and whatever Sony Santa Monica is working on (I personally would love to see a God of War with ancient Egyptian gods). Luckily 2025 looks like an excellent lineup for PlayStation so I’m definitely excited to see what gets announced and released.@DETfaninATL I think you could argue that if it was a F2P title, and Sony gave it time, it could have been fine. Going back and reading about the game, most reviews say that the gameplay isn’t bad. I wish I could play it just to see how “bad” it was.@KundaliniRising333 @IOI There’s definitely a difference between genuine criticism and concern trolling though. I’m a PS guy, but i’m all for critiquing Sony when necessary. My first comment after the show was that i was disappointed with the lack of first party info. Nothing wrong with pointing out where Sony is lacking or needs improvement.However, concern trolling is very different. An example is people creating false narratives and expressing concern that Playstation has no games. While they had 12 exclusives last year alone.Or claiming PS has no upcoming games, and when you list 17 exclusives announced for Playstation, they move the goalposts again, saying exclusives don’t count, arguing that they have to be first party to count.Then you mention Death Stranding 2. But oh no, thats not good enough, cause it’s a 3rd party studio, even though Sony classifies it as first party.Ok, then you go along with all these new demanded criteria and say Sony has 6 announced first party games. But then the argument shifts once more. Now they say those don’t count because theres hardly any gameplay shown?!The constant shifting of criteria isnt genuine critcism, it’s just concern trolling. Basically constantly changing the rules of the argument to fit someones narrative, even when the facts dont align. It’s like they’re adamant in to convincing you that things are bad, pretending they’re so concerned about Sony’s lineup, while constantly ignoring counterarguments.Actually this is the first time i’ve heard the term concern trolling, but yeah it seems to perfectly describe this type of behaviour.Edit: @ButterySmooth30FPS @Jimmer-jammer Basically what these guys are saying 👍🏼@KeanuReaves yeah you are pathetic, can handle my comment so now your wining. Take you own advice and move on. Also not trolling when it’s the truth, but keep commenting shows how much my comment got to youHow is this grating exactly? Who gets grated by this? Because the healthy response , whether its 1 person complaining or the entire sony user base, is to give exactly 0 f’s.The world would be a lot better if some people were about to talk and then didn’t instead.I’m never disappointed for 2 reasons: I don’t expect anything from Sony, and I don’t watch state of play. I’d rather rely on a certain website called PushSquare.I think the Playstation faithful have had a rough time of late. The outage during an important weekend, tone deaf response adding more PS+ time, without considering offline games were impacted. Mishandling of first party IPs, annoying PC gamers, with forced PSN and then backtracking. Its a litany of errors, fueling the naturally feral maw of internet discourse.They desperately need a win, but unless they can be more consistent in their decision making and customer focus, the negative sentiment will continue.Here’s hoping they listen, I mean really listen.P.S. – release a Bloodborne remaster 😂I think last state of play is good, there’s no amazing zelda botw type of games but the list is good. I have no hope for western games anymore so I’m satisfied that there’s a lot of non western games in here.If none of the 30 games were of interest to you, then you are no games player imo.I completely agree with this article, the entitlement and ‘cool to dis’ attitude that pervades sites such as this is maddening and does not reflect the vast majority of Playstation players.It was mid, no GoW Greek Saga Remaster, no Bloodborne remaster for PS5, not even more details on Ghost of Yotei which releases this year. I’m mildly interested in Tides of Annihilation, Saros and the Stellar Blade DLC, but that’s about it.That being said, it was better than most State of Plays, but because we know several 1st party studios have been cooking for some time, a lot of people expected more.I hope we’ll get a proper PS Showcase in May with tons of games from the 1st party studios, I’m thinking Ghost of Yotei, Saros, Wolverine, Heretic, GoW Greek Saga Remaster and more.
This gen is almost over, we need another PS Showcase at least as good as the 2021 one, having more gameplay this time.EDIT: It’s the 20th anniversary of God of War, so besides the Greek Saga remastered they should at least tease the theme of the next installment, I’m thinking Egypt.This is just modern times, people like to complain, about everything. They think it’s cool to complain or something, you see it really at everything and not just at this State of Play.They show an incredible lineup of games, probably one of the best in recent years, but no, we need to complain so we’ll wine that there was no Ghost of Yotei or Death stranding shown.The other day i actually heard a friend, of which i know he’s a huge rpg fan, say 2024 was a bad gaming year for him. When i said it’s prolly the best rpg year in a decade and reminded him of all the great rpg’s that came out he thought for a bit and said ‘you’re right, i was just defaulting to complaining about something’.It’s a really weird phenomenom.I thought the show was boring because half of the games shown looked exactly the same to me. Save for The Midnight Walk, Shinobi, and the octopus game, everything just all started to blend together.I thought it was a very good show. Lies of P Overture, Tides of Annihilation, Split Fiction, Stellar Blade PC all looked great and Borderlands 4 release date is also welcome (though the trailer for that one wasn’t that impressive, didn’t look much evolved over 3, so I need to see more).I didn’t watch it myself, but from what I’ve seen there were a few nuggets of interest there, and I’m genuinely excited to play the old Armoured Core games as well, so all in all enough to keep me going until the next big reveal… whatever that maybe.I get the annoyance of online backlash though. People love to moan. The exact feeling I get every time I see another “PSVR2 has no games / is doomed” story.What a nothing article. It’s the same story every time.I thought it was good, there were a ton of games that looked interesting. Then, just for laughs, I went to the comments. There was an almost even split between “why the sequels and remasters/no new IPs” and “why all stuff we haven’t seen before” (plus the obligatory “why is that man brown/girl covered up”).I think the start of this article is right, and journalism’s got a lot to answer for. There was a point, I don’t know, 10 or 15 years ago maybe, when journalists started letting their frustrations show in their work, and that coupled with the demographic growing up and increasingly moving in businessy circles has resulted in the discourse skewing ever more towards questioning what developers are into. As younger gamers came through, they’ve seized the reins and overentitlement has become the new normal.I don’t know that the genie can be put back in the bottle as any attempt positive spin from an outlet just comes across as shilling (although with two little kids I put toothpaste back in the tube all the time so who knows). People need to check their greed a bit and get some perspective on what actually important. How do we make that happen?@ButterySmooth30FPS Because they’re only doing it to pad their stats. They can call them what they like, but if they don’t own the studio then it’s not really first party.@Titntin I agree. This current generation has some of the most negative and entitled gamers I’ve ever come across. The whole discourse around the recent outage was particularly depressing to read.A company can show as many games as it wants in whatever type of format it wants. What it can’t do is force people to be excited about what they see and those who aren’t interested have every right to say so, no matter what people who write for websites or fans of the company think. I’m a PlayStation guy more than Xbox or Nintendo but this State of Play, outside of a game or two, was entirely meh. Not going to apologize for feeling that way.@JoDoMac pause.Literally 95% of the games shown are multiplats. Rarely anything exclusive except that last game. I was hoping it was Killzone, but it just an spiritual successor to returnal (maybe)I expected to be in a minority for “did not watch”, but didn’t imagine it being that small.If I can’t buy the product right now, or at least within a few weeks, I really couldn’t give two hoots.I stopped being a hype monkey when I was 12, and that was a very long time ago.@Lysterao Is that the sound of goalposts being moved?!I liked those times when you knew that you would have a big conference on E3 and TGS… Nothing more and that was fine… Now we have more bits of information on SoPs but doesnt feel right…. People says thats what the Showcases are for… But when was the last “good” one? 2021? We dont even know when they are held… Some years Sony doesnt even held one…@UltimateOtaku91 The internet is mostly full of nobodies and fake accounts, rage baiting individuals that seem to think everything revolves around them and i’m sure Sony isn’t dumb enough to outweigh what they care and don’t care about.I think what it also is that development time has increased amongst the costs and there isn’t much to be shown until it’s ready but people don’t really understand that.it’s also that people automatically consider a showcase or a live showing to be the equivalent of something like E3. Crazy world.The article and lots of comments are nauseating. If you feel the state of play was not great , you are entitled to that view just the same as if you liked the state of play. Its a personal choice. You also have the same right to make your voice heard. I personally usually like their state of plays, not love them, realizing that not every game is made for me. This one i felt was just ok. Sure there were a couple games i thought were interesting, midnight walk, hell is us, a couple others i def need to see more to really form an opinion. The housemarque game i felt was just a waste of time or just to have one main sony title showing. Some gameplay even if it was just a minute would have been great. If they dont have that to show, that game isnt coming for a long while. True sony is in this situation because of investing too much into live service but that is their own fault. They dont get a reprieve for it. How a table of people could agree to such nonsense based on sonys past is remarkable. Now i know big games are usually thought of as showcase titles but they havent had those for a while due to the live service debacle and other things. I believe there was the opportunity to show at least some small snippets of the bigger games gameplay. At this point we are well into the ps5 lifespan, i think seeing games that really showcase the console and the need for it is an easy ask regardless of other factors. Now i know that microsoft is bringing lots of its titles to ps but their game showings have totally blown sonys away as of late in my opinion. Where sonys main games are at may keep them from really competing, they could at least offer the glimmer of hope from the other side.I think it’s completely fair to drag Sony for the lack of quality in their State of Play events. Especially when you compare them to the recent Nintendo and Xbox events, which have been stellar in comparison. Yes, there was some stuff here that looked interesting, but Sony has a habit of not reading the room when it comes to what the fanbase wants, and consistently not delivering on those fronts. It’s telling that the recent Xbox event was more exciting for Playstation fans than the Playstation event itself was.Y’all need to touch grass.There’s a lot of philosophy from both the east and west advocating for moderation in all things, including video games and – in this case – your expectations around the PS state of play.I know that social media amplifies the most vitriolic and negative opinions to maximize engagement – but y’all really need to take things into moderation.@nessisonett Never stop being unconstructive 😉@ButterySmooth30FPS In what way is that goalposts being moved. Other than pointing out Sony trying to move the goalposts for what counts as 1st party.@PeaceSalad EVERYTHING IS FINE, I SUPPORT SONY WHOLEHEARTEDLY AND MY FAMILY ARE NOT BEING HELD HOSTAGE@MARl0 yes but you say that like that’s been the case for years in terms of Xbox reveals and it’s been the complete opposite. For once Xbox has had better game reveals, it’s about bloody time frankly. 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