A reader tries to understand why it’s been so long since Sony announced a new single-player PS5 game and what they could be waiting for.
Like many of you reading this I was watching the State Of Play on Thursday and like many of you I was less than shocked to find that it had absolutely nothing of interest. I don’t think there was a single new game from anyone, except that terrible indie game at the start.
This wasn’t a surprise, since Sony warned that it would concentrate on games already announced. But more than that, it wasn’t a surprise because Sony hasn’t announced anything new for a very long time. Although until I did some research I didn’t realise quite how long. The last time that Sony announced a new single-player game, from an internal first party studio. was on September 9, 2021.
That’s just over two years ago and it was for Marvel’s Wolverine, which we’ve never seen any gameplay footage of and which has no release date. How is it possible that the biggest, most successful video games company in the world can go for so long doing so little? Why won’t they announce anything new and when will they break their silence?
I have no answer to these questions, I don’t think anyone has. But you can only assume this is purposeful, because Sony has been doing it for so long. It’s now clear it has nothing to do with the Activision Blizzard acquisition and it’s obviously not because they haven’t got any games in development.
Nor is it because they have an aversion to only showing off pre-rendered trailers, years before their release. Not only is that exactly what they did with Wolverine but it’s also what happened with the only three games they have announced in the last two years: three live service games called (and I bet you didn’t remember their names): Fairgame$, Concord, and Bungie’s Marathon.
Despite everyone telling them they don’t want them, Sony is obsessed with live service games and has promised 10 or more by 2026, even though it hasn’t released a single one yet. There was supposed to be a fourth, but it sounds like the previous revealed The Last Of Us multiplayer game has either been cancelled or severely delayed.
No one cares at all about these games and even if they did it’s not clear what any of them except Marathon are. We’re in the peculiar situation where the success of the PlayStation 4 and 5 has been built on the quality of Sony’s single-player, story-driven games and yet their current business plan seems to revolve around making the exact opposite.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for them diversifying; I’m not sure we need any more sad dad simulators. But going to the complete opposite route and only making live service, online multiplayer games is madness.
Except we do know, thanks to leaks and job ads, that Sony developers are working on things like Ghost Of Tsushima 2, a new Horizon game, and some kind of Twisted Metal reboot. So why won’t they talk about them?
Have they been cancelled? Are they waiting for some kind of new hardware to be released before they’re announced? Surely it can’t be that, considering how Sony has treated the PlayStation VR2, which they have only released a single first party game for and announced nothing else all year.
I can barely comprehend how weird and anti-consumer that is. I would be livid if I had spent all that money on a PlayStation VR2 and then found out this is how Sony was going to support it. And we’re almost at the point where support for the PlayStation 5 isn’t much better. Two years it’s been. Two solid years. Who will take bets on how much longer it will be until Sony finally remind us that they used to make video games?
By reader Wolfie
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