A reader offers a prediction for Sony’s June showcase and worries that a focus on live service games is going ruin the PS5’s reputation.
I think it’s obvious now that there will be no peace in the games industry until the Activision Blizzard acquisition happens. Sony and Microsoft have been pulling their punches, in terms of new announcements, for the best part of a year now and the only hope of them finally opening up is the showcases this June. The Xbox one is apparently two hours long and the rumours are that Sony’s will be the ‘second phase’ of the PlayStation 5.
Waiting for a console maker to have a massive blow out at E3, or the equivalent, where they suddenly announce a bunch of games at once is a bit of a cliché in fan circles. It almost never happens but that’s under normal circumstances and between the pandemic and the acquisition that’s definitely not where we are now.
I doubt the Microsoft event will have anything particularly mind-blowing, probably just some new CGI trailers for Fable and Perfect Dark, because they haven’t had time to build up to anything else, but Sony has had time and seems to have been sitting on a lot of games for a long time. But I don’t think fans are going to like the new direction PlayStation 5 is going to take.
The thing we’ve got to remember is that any decision about video games is now taken five years or more before the game is actually released, because that’s how long they take to make. That’s why games like Avengers and Suicide Squad got into so much trouble, because they banked on live service games being the next big thing and it was already proven they weren’t before the games had a chance to come out.
Sony seems to be in a similar position, where they made a commitment last year to have 10 live service games by 2026. Considering none of them have been released yet, that could end up being three or more a year from next year, which is a hell of a thought.
They haven’t said what any of them are yet, but it seems obvious The Last Of Us multiplayer game is one and probably the Horizon multiplayer game as well. That likely means that all of the big PlayStation franchises will be getting one, although I dread to think how they’re going to make that work for God Of War.
But if you’re talking about a second phase then 10 games that are completely different to anything Sony has ever done before, and the opposite of what people are usually looking at from Sony exclusives, certainly seems to qualify.
I suspect that the PS5 Pro will also be part of this second phase, whether it’s announced in June or not, and apparently this portable streaming console. That’s also a big change in direction, so again the second phase description seems to make sense.
I assume there will be some ordinary games announced along the way too, we’re overdue on Ghost Of Tsushima 2 and there are those rumours about a Twisted Metal revival, but I’m struggling to think of what else we know about that might be imminent. Bluepoint hasn’t announced a new game in ages, and I really want to know what the makers of Returnal are going to do next, but it’s probably too early for both of those.
There must also surely be some new PlayStation VR2 games on the horizon. Sony bought a VR developer and rushed out the headset in February, so they must have a plan for something else to come out soon. Astro Bot: Rescue Mission 2 is absurdly overdue already, but we have no clue as to what else might be on its way or if there even is anything else. I assume there is, and it’s all part of the second phase, but I think it’s already clear that VR is never going to be that big.
So that’s what we know and can guess at the moment. It doesn’t sound all that great does it? The ‘proper’ games are the only interesting things and yet that’ll probably end up being the smallest part of the show, and I worry what that’s going to do for the reputation of PlayStation.
I don’t know what Sony was feeling insecure about three years ago, when they gave all this the greenlight, but the decisions already feel outdated and just plain bad. I’m sure there’s plenty of people at Sony that have convinced themselves that The Last Of Us multiplayer is going to be as big of Call Of but, come on, it’s not going to be.
PlayStation owes its success to high quality, cinematic single-player games and if it’s throwing them in the bin because it thinks they’re no longer a draw, then I don’t think Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard is going to be Sony’s only problem in the future…
By reader Combi
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