A reader looks back at the history of PlayStation consoles and argues that the PS5 is going to end up with an even worse reputation than the PS3.
I have been a PlayStation owner since the very first console was released in the 90s. I don’t think I’m a mindless fan though. I’ve owned most Nintendo consoles at the same time and had an Xbox 360 as well. I don’t think Sony are some infallible company and I don’t really understand how any one can at the moment. And yet that’s how many people still talk about them online.
At this point I think it’s pretty clear there’s no PlayStation masterplan. There’s no motherlode of major announcements waiting to be unleashed. The current trickle of reveals, and just one or two new games a year, is all we’re getting for the next several years. How many times in the last two years have people said the next State of the Play is going to be ‘the one’ where they announce a bunch of amazing things and what we end up with is a big fat nothing?
The last State of Play was the best one in ages and really all we got was Ghost Of Yōtei and we basically already knew about that anyway. The fact that that was the best preview event we’ve had in two years says it all about this generation and the clear fact that the PlayStation 5 is going to end up as the worst PlayStation console ever.
There are really on two contenders here. The PlayStation 1, 2, and 4 are unarguably great consoles. I cannot take seriously anyone that would say otherwise. You can say others in the same generation were better if you want but to say that those PlayStation machines, and their line-ups, were anything other than iconic is madness.
The odd one out is clearly the PlayStation 3, which thanks to peak Sony arrogance was too expensive, too difficult to develop for, and had no good exclusives for a long time. Its position is kind of the opposite to the PlayStation 5 though, which started off very well, with plenty of games for the first couple of years and a relatively reasonable price – which is now getting more expensive with the PS5 Pro.
What makes me laugh about the PlayStation 3 is I keep forgetting it was the same generation as the Xbox 360, which it doesn’t really seem like. The Xbox 360 absolutely dominated that generation as far as I’m concerned. The most high-profile PlayStation 3 exclusives were things like the Uncharted trilogy and Metal Gear Solid 4 (and The Last Of Us, but that came right at the end of the generation) and in terms of public recognition they were well behind Halo and Gears Of War at their peak.
The PlayStation 3 ended well though and the Xbox 360 ended badly, thanks to Kinect, and you saw how in the next generation Sony had learned from its mistakes and Microsoft had no idea why it had been successful in the first place.
So, the PlayStation 3 was not a great console but in the end it only ended up being a blip in Sony’s history. By comparison, the PlayStation 5 is more like a great festering pimple that is only getting worse and which Sony doesn’t seem to have the courage to burst.
I’m not going to speculate on whether they’re still obsessed with live service games or not because how am I supposed to know? Sony aren’t bothered to communicate with their fans and the most convincing rumours you get from insiders is that there’s disagreement at PlayStation and two factions fighting over what should be done.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter, because whether Sony intends to make nothing but live service games or nothing but single-player, or something in-between, the end result is the same: they’re not actually releasing anything.
This year we got Concord, which was erased from existence after two weeks, and Astro Bot which was great but Sony made zero effort to promote. Then we got the world’s most pointless remake in Until Dawn, which somehow ended up doing worse than Concord! What a double whammy that is. Literally unbelievable.
And now Sony has got nothing big for Christmas and nothing with a scheduled release date for next year. It doesn’t matter what they plan to do… what they’re actually doing is nothing at all.
And yet they want us to buy the word’s most expensive console to play a bunch of PlayStation 4 ports in ever so slightly higher resolution? Sony lost the plot long ago and not only is PlayStation 5 their worst console I’m not sure they’re going to recover with the PlayStation 6.
By reader Sensor
The reader’s features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.
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