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[POKEYCLYDE]

If they were underwhelmed why do the individual trailers all have positive reception?

Again, I think you're conflating things together here.

This forum rated the Xbox Dev Direct 75% A or B.

This forum rated the Sony SoP 27% B or Above (as there was S, A+, A, B+ and B as options). With an F grade getting nearly as much as those top grades combined.

It's okay to admit Sony's state of play wasn't exciting. That it was disappointing.

 

[Roufianos]

Irony is, Colin will probably play 2 games from that show and stick to his shitty indies.

I like him but he's been making fun of his audience nonstop "where are the games?", implying that we all had nothing to play. Clearly it's the lack of Sony 1st party games people are annoyed about and, based on the recent cancellations and bs direction, we have every right to be annoyed.

 

[Orbital2060]

I bet Sony regret canning Days Gone, a proper sequel would have hit pretty hard at this point.

 

[Elios83]

It's just the usual entitlement from people who do not represent the market reality, think the perception and mood on online communities that are bubbles is reality and are basically being left behind.

To please these people Sony should announce and release at least 4 major AAA single player games every year and below that is a disappointment.
That is not happening because Sony does not have the development capability to do so, no publisher can do it (even Microsoft 90 billions of acquisitions later) and it would just lead to sales cannibalization and the product would become mainly a first party console which is something they absolutely do not want (PS1 and PS2 made their fortunes with third party games not first party games).

According to the same people Sony also does not have the right to try other things like GaaS, they have to make the creative decisions these people have in their minds or whatever they do is automatically shit. When things are announced is always not enough.
It's just a losing game to bother with these people.

 

[hemo memo]

Colin outside Sony HQ after every SoP:

 

[Mibu no ookami]

This forum rated the Xbox Dev Direct 75% A or B.

This forum rated the Sony SoP 27% B or Above (as there was S, A+, A, B+ and B as options). With an F grade getting nearly as much as those top grades combined.

It's okay to admit Sony's state of play wasn't exciting. That it was disappointing.

I didn't think it was a good State of Play. I voted a D. I just think you should realize that GAF is not representative of gaming as a whole and more importantly the individual games presented at the SoP have in fact registered more widely than the developer direct and that the developer direct had one exclusive that no one wants.

 

[justiceiro]

I also found the event great, but I later found out some of those games were already announced before. Also, some of my friends mentioned that they were disappointed with the ps studios games.

If you think about, there wasn't new entries in established IP's, just new IP's. People say they want something new, but it's bullshit. They want something new that looks like something they already know.

 

[Cyborg]

To be honest I do think people are always expecting way to much from a SoP. In my opinion the 2025 is packed with great games to play on PS5 and Im going to enjoy it. With Ghost and DS2 coming this year combined with GTA6 and maybe next BF game, it is just a packed year.

 

[Fabieter]

Views do not equal sentiment.

Game of Thrones final episode broke it's record for concurrent viewers with 19 million people watching live. Does that make the finale the best episode? No.

Mobile games have the most users. Does that make Mobile the best platform for gaming?

People were excited by what was shown at Xbox's developer direct and underwhelmed by what was shown at Sony's State of Play. That's a fucking fact. It has nothing to do with Xbox or Sony, just the showcases in and of themselves.

Sony should ask to have some Microsoft ports in the next SOP.

 

[Orbital2060]

I didn't think it was a good State of Play. I voted a D. I just think you should realize that GAF is not representative of gaming as a whole and more importantly the individual games presented at the SoP have in fact registered more widely than the developer direct and that the developer direct had one exclusive that no one wants.

 

[Lucifers Beard]

Sure, expectations are high for Sony but they did this to themselves during the PS3 era where they dumped out shit loads of big first party games.

Also, most of the games from that state of play look the fucking same. Third person action adventure hack and slash stuff in a fantasy/sci-fi setting. I know there were other games there, but this is really all I remember seeing.

Where the fuck are the other types of games? Give us an FPS with multiplayer or a SOCOM or anything that isn't just run of the mill souls like stuff. What I would give to see a standard 8-12 hour game with multiplayer like we saw during the 360 era.

 

[GymWolf]

Colin outside Sony HQ after every SoP:

And this is him when he fail to gaslight his audience

 

[Felessan]

This forum rated the Xbox Dev Direct 75% A or B.

This forum rated the Sony SoP 27% B or Above (as there was S, A+, A, B+ and B as options). With an F grade getting nearly as much as those top grades combined.

It's okay to admit Sony's state of play wasn't exciting. That it was disappointing.

The games themselves were far better.
The show and managing expectation of hardcore fans were worse.
As I explained in another thread Sony seems to keep excitement level of its shows in check. It disappoints fans but it's better for business

 

[POKEYCLYDE]

I didn't think it was a good State of Play. I voted a D. I just think you should realize that GAF is not representative of gaming as a whole and more importantly the individual games presented at the SoP have in fact registered more widely than the developer direct and that the developer direct had one exclusive that no one wants.

I think we are talking about seperate things. When I talk about Xbox's Direct or Sony's State of Play, I'm not talking about the companies as a whole. I'm literally only talking about the shows.

What's exclusive doesn't matter. What the show does for the brand doesn't matter. I'm evaluating the show on it's performance as a show.

The State of Play didn't have an "Oh shit!" moment. It had several "That game looks good" OR "I'll try that out" moments in there. But nothing dropped jaws. Nothing was surprising.

Even rumored things showing up would have made the show great. All it needed was Bloodborne 60fps to be an S++ show. Final Fantasy 9 Remake. God of War teaser. Wolverine Gameplay. Sly Cooper returns. Resident Evil 9. Even SAROS gameplay would have sufficed if it looked good.

But it didn't have any "Oh shit!" moments. It's "One last thing..." was a teaser to a new IP from a studio that made a decent but forgettable game with roughly the same premise.

People are disappointed because when we watch these showcases we want to be surprised, we want to be hyped, we want to be awed. This State of Play failed to do any of that.

 

[Clear]

Basically he's just repeating the same points I made both before and after the SoP here.

If people don't like reality then tough for them, because its 2025 and the plain reality is that in this decade games take massive investments of time and manpower to make. They are a scarce and valuable commodity, which is why pulling the plug a couple of years in is an acceptable loss nowadays because they are far from complete at that stage.

Tangentially, its also why Chinese dev is such a threat. Those boys do not give a fuck about driving huge teams hard for the entire cycle. While all the fools have been pearl clutching about working conditions in Western studios, as Bobby Kotick wisely noticed they were establishing a standard of productivity that is basically unmatchable without unions/labour trinbunals pitching a shit fit.

If they can produce in 4 years what it takes 6 to achieve in the West, guess who's up fucked river?

That's the reality of business kids. And why I said some time back that now they have the requisite massive investment they are going to eat Western devs alive.

 

[Felessan]

People are disappointed because when we watch these showcases we want to be surprised, we want to be hyped, we want to be awed. This State of Play failed to do any of that.

And Sony obviously doesn't want players to be overly excited over it's games at some random point in February.

There is a fundamental problems with big exciting shows for Sony:
1. This excitement will not last long and will be quickly overwritten in week or two by next batch of news on internet. Brain has limited capacity and information overload led to shorter attention span when things are replaced and forgotten much faster.
2. Nature doesn't like to reward simply for repetion, so any excitement builds a resistance, making it harder to get excited again. The higher the excitement spike, the bigger the resistance, leading to a burn-out of interest
3. Sony goal is to sell games, not excite fans, so the whole excitement part should be structured to get interest and maintain it all the way to preorder/launch
4. People, on other hand, became overexposed and with their short attention spam become junkies, seeking another spike of excitement and even actively demanding it, even if it's detrimental to long-term interest

The whole notion "make a grand show on E3, feed some news to keep flame over slow summer month and then sell games in autumn" does not work in internet era where information flow are so high that any excitement overwritten and effect dies in mere weeks.

 

[GudOlRub]

He doesn't get it does he?
I'm not mad because Sony didn't announce any big-ish games, I'm mad because they didn't announce the big games I want

 

[FeralEcho]

Been seeing certain users on GAF constantly defending Sony's low effort first party output for years so no wonder some are defending that shitty SOP.

Says alot about their abysmall standards compared to those that keep asking Sony to do better. But God forbid people question their favourite company(that don't even know or give a fuck about them existing) just consume consume no questions asked.

Xbox fanboys were doing the exact same thing during the end of the 360 era and onward when everything started crumbling and acting like:

Now the Xbox brand is doing amazing....on everything but the Xbox console lol

Worked out so great for them kissing Phil and the company in the ass that now by the end of it all Phil might as well have literally showed them his ass with the way Xbox ended up treating the Xbox users that have been "loyal" for years.

So instead of ass kissing Sony right now which has been on such a terrible decision making streak for the past few years from the outrageously low amount of communication with the fans to the DEI infestation of certain prolific first party studios to the full on gaas initiative that failed spectacularly and has sent studios back for years to all the game cancellations that came out of said initiative and now a focus on remasters of games that work perfectly fine on the system they are literally getting remastered for.

So,as fans of this brand, instead of deflecting all that maybe what we should be doing is some reflecting and voicing our concerns and not go into full on cope mode like Colin is doing at this point and act like nothing is wrong and everything is going just fine.

Again...just like Xbox at one point ACTING like everything is fine does not MEAN it ACTUALLY is fine. Unless you want to be in the house when everything comes crumbling down just like Xbox fans have experienced. Things are not fine and until you start voicing your concerns things won't change.

These companies don't give a fuck about you unless it starts affecting their revenues or image. They are not your friend.

 

[MetalFreak]

It wasn't a bad state of play but the reality is that from Sony we got a remaster of a 6 year old game and a teaser for a game coming out in 2026.
I believe what people think is that if Sony weren't pissing around with GAAS bullshit maybe we could have a Sony closer to the the ps4 era...

 

[Three]

"we want more first party games", he lists one. People in this forum have listed how ridiculous was the PS3 and PS4 era, where Sony was pumping entire trilogies for multiple franchises during the same generation. I get that now things are not like that, but to confuse the sentiment of what we lost vs that we should be happy about anyyyy first party launch it's been disingenuous. And I am saying this by been super excited about Saros

That shows how ridiculous people have become though. They got their first party games announcements already ND are working on Intergalactic, Housemarque on Saros, Bend did a days gone remaster, Insomniac Wolverine, Sucker Punch Ghost of Yotie. What is there to know? They lambast a show filled with a new first party reveal and great third party announcements then they turn around and get excited for another with purely third party stuff anyway. It's all perception and not reality. If somebody was more interested in games and not background drama it was good show.

 

[Johnny Concrete]

They lean more and more to Nintendo Directs to me, where they show game after game, but probably 90% is 'whatever, next' to me.

And that's fine. I only need a couple of games each year to be fulfilled.

You always hope to be amazed by something, but that didn't happen this time. Saros could be cool, but it was basically a logo reveal.

 

[Horseganador]

Every time there is a SoP, it's always the same with Sony doomed, whoever expects 3-4 new AAA firsts in a SoP better not watch it and that's it, that will never happen, they will all seem like garbage even if they present 40 minutes of good games.

 

[Herbspiceguy]

Defense forces are silly. Throwing in a 'maybe I should retire' makes it pathetic.

People can have any opinion they want about a showcase.

 

[TGO]

It was a good show of games, the original problem is if you remove the multiplatform games what do you have.
PS5 doesn't have a shortage of Great 3rd Party games.

 

[Jakk]

I don't think the State of Play was terrible, I gave it a C. It just feels like almost no one knows how to make a good show anymore. I seriously miss E3, it's not like those shows were always good, but at least it was all concentrated together, so there was almost always something for everyone.

I think nowadays TGA is the only one worth watching. Other than that, it's mostly boring State of Plays, Developer Directs and I don't know what else. Also, what doesn't help the reception is the fact that last PS Showcase was almost 2 years ago if I remember correctly. And it wasn't well-received either.

 

[Xtib81]

These companies don't give a fuck about you unless it starts affecting their revenues or image. They are not your friend.

For real though. It's crazy to me to see people so attached to a company when said company doesn't give a flying fuck about them, and they never will.

 

[Mr Moose]

It was fine. Not a lot of games for me personally but there were plenty and the talking was kept to a minimum.

 

[Topher]

From what I've seen, the original SOP rating thread folks had pretty much a reaction in line of what you said, the poll results show.

It was till the viewership records thread popped up, some Sony fans started to act like this is a greatest show and all those C and below ratings are GAF bubbles.

Yeah, but there are always going to be some fans that think that about any show. Some are acting like its "shit". That's fine too. Just opinions.

 

[Shubh_C63]

It's not that difficult and it is not a numbers game either counting how many first party or third party games were shown.
Simple fact is games shown did not excited the players. And gamers like addicts are always looking for that "Woah" moment.


Soros, would get hyped if they had something to show lol ( I had to google what games were shown as I forgot already)
Directive 8020 is a "cool" Quantic Dream The Thing based game, again not much gameplay.
Metal Eden GaaS? Single Player?
Minds Eye, one of the most generic game and trailer in recent memory.

The only game I even remember were The Midnight Walk, Sonic Racing and Onimusha. Just showcase 4 games AT MAX and cover a bit more of them with more SOPs in an year.
Xbox Event was fire seriously.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

From what I've seen, the original SOP rating thread folks had pretty much a reaction in line of what you said, the poll results show.

It was till the viewership records thread popped up, some Sony fans started to act like this is a greatest show and all those C and below ratings are GAF bubbles.

Nobody made a problem of the C rating.

Some are just questioning the F ratings on Gaf

 

[TheRaidenPT]

What people want is a Playstation Showcase showing all their party titles up until 2026/Early 27.

People wanna see some Wolverine gameplay, Venom if it still exists, Intergalactic, Soros gameplay, Ghost of Yotei gameplay.

Sony needs to make people excited and looking forward the next few years.

 

[RoboFu]

Oh no.. not a negative reaction to a bad showing? How dare people !

 

[EN250]

"we want more first party games", he lists one. People in this forum have listed how ridiculous was the PS3 and PS4 era, where Sony was pumping entire trilogies for multiple franchises during the same generation. I get that now things are not like that, but to confuse the sentiment of what we lost vs that we should be happy about anyyyy first party launch it's been disingenuous. And I am saying this by been super excited about Saros

Close the thread, first post nailed it

There were at least 5 games that looked really good in that SoP, but only ONE was a PlayStation Exclusive made by a 1P Dev which is Saros

And before the excuse of "games take too long to make now" yeah sure, but priorities aren't in place either, otherwise Sony wouldn't have wasted so much time and money in that Concord trash that was in dev for 8 years and died in a few weeks, same way they're wasting time and money now with their next failure: FAILGAME$

 

[Darchaos]

 

[Topher]

Also wanted to say Colin saying stuff like this makes him think he might retire is kind of pathetic. Curb your ego. This ain't about you, Colin.

 

[POKEYCLYDE]

And Sony obviously doesn't want players to be overly excited over it's games at some random point in February.

There is a fundamental problems with big exciting shows for Sony:
1. This excitement will not last long and will be quickly overwritten in week or two by next batch of news on internet. Brain has limited capacity and information overload led to shorter attention span when things are replaced and forgotten much faster.
2. Nature doesn't like to reward simply for repetion, so any excitement builds a resistance, making it harder to get excited again. The higher the excitement spike, the bigger the resistance, leading to a burn-out of interest
3. Sony goal is to sell games, not excite fans, so the whole excitement part should be structured to get interest and maintain it all the way to preorder/launch
4. People, on other hand, became overexposed and with their short attention spam become junkies, seeking another spike of excitement and even actively demanding it, even if it's detrimental to long-term interest

The whole notion "make a grand show on E3, feed some news to keep flame over slow summer month and then sell games in autumn" does not work in internet era where information flow are so high that any excitement overwritten and effect dies in mere weeks.

Every State of Play doesn't need to be Sony's 2015 E3 showcase. We don't need 5 ultra hype amazing announcements.

We need 1. They don't even need to be announcements, they can be gameplay of a title people are excited for. Confirmation of something people want.

If your fundamental belief is that these showcases shouldn't garner excitement, I can't even begin to dissect how wrong that is.

The fact is people expect to be excited during these events and this latest State of Play did not deliver on that expectation. It had way more games I would personally play than Xbox's last Developer Direct, but Xbox's Direct delivered excitement in a way the SoP did not.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

Third party never was explicitly stated as the premise of State of Play.

This is from direct from Sony's website:

I am all happy with the third-party announcements (especially tides of annihilation), while let down by lack of first-party announcements (I didn't expect anything Bloodborne at all, but at least announce GoW Greek Saga), I am sure you can and will understand the nuance here.

Third party games are part of the Playstation library. This has always been the case and will continue to be so.

This narrative that it should be all about 1st party is retarded.

 

[begotten]

I don't think people know what being a fanboy is anymore.

The people who call Colin a PlayStation fanboy don't listen to him regularly and base this off clips or an outdated image they created through not much information.

What kind of fanboy would expose Concords' $400M budget and do so whilst throwing shade at the entire company.

Just some comparisons off the top of my head from what I know and see:

- Him and David Jaffe (when together) show and voice clear contempt toward Herman Hulst & SIE Leadership in general, constantly (Meanwhile look at how Xbox fanboys view Phil Spencer and Aaron Greenberg)
- He doesn't like God of War, Ghost of Tsushima and Spider-Man (Meanwhile Xbox fanboys lie to themselves over every MS published game)
- He shits on Bungie all the time and calls them a disaster, being one of many examples why he hates acquisitions (What did Xbox fanboys think of acquisitions before ABK again?)

Also his co-hosts aren't PlayStation first people at all. He hasn't built an echo chamber around himself like every Xbox content creator.

 

[Gojiira]

Not fussed either way. They arent going to announce anything for this year that will compete with Monster Hunter Wilds or GTA6 and it is really, really foolish to try to.
But…They do have the most hype upcoming games beyond that with Ghost of Yotei, Death Stranding 2 and Saros soooooo wouldnt be surprised if they came out swinging going into 2026.

 

[GudOlRub]

That shows how ridiculous people have become though. They got their first party games announcements already ND are working on Intergalactic, Housemarque on Saros, Bend did a days gone remaster, Insomniac Wolverine, Sucker Punch Ghost of Yotie. What is there to know? They lambast a show filled with a new first party reveal and great third party announcements then they turn around and get excited for another with purely third party stuff anyway. It's all perception and not reality. If somebody was more interested in games and not background drama it was good show.

People are just tired of the current situation, Sucker Punch released Infamous Second Son, First Light and Ghost of Tsushima on PS4, Naughty Dog released Uncharted 4, Uncharted Lost Legacy and Last of Us 2, Guerrilla released Shadow Fall and Horizon Zero Dawn. The only studio whose output has remained pretty fucking amazing is Insomniac.
At this rate if the PS6 does release in 2027/8, most of playstation studios will only release 1 big exclusive for PS5 in its entire lifespan, cross-gen titles completely fucked people's perspectives on game development and now they use any excuse they can to lash out on these big developers due to the ever-increasing development times.

And I won't even bother ranting about the aversion to risk nowadays, it's either sequels, remasters or remakes, new IPs seem to be a dying breed.

 

[Hugare]

Oh fuck off, Colin

I've been watching these for years, and this State of Play was indeed one of the worst.

Returnal was niche, and I doubt Soros will hit big numbers (I loved Returnal).

The other 1st part announcement was freaking Days Gone Remastered.

Sony is relying too much on 3rd party lately

 

[Orbital2060]

Its funny how history repeats itself, and now first party suddenly isnt so important. Its a carbon copy of what people used to say in defense of the Xbox One software.

 

[ValiantInstance]

It was shit. You know how I know that? Because all coverage of it disappeared like a fart in the wind. I haven't seen one video on my feed analysing any of it, except for people talking about how unnecessary the Days Gone remaster is.

 

[Kokoloko85]

The show sucked compared the e3 days. Simple. It got a E from me and thats only because of Saros

Yes there was loads of good 3d party stuff that Ill be buying. But Barely any new major 3rd party announcements, no RE9, Persona, or Ninja Gaiden etc. Then there was pointless stuff like the MGS3 trailer we just saw a few days earlier, 2 trailers for Minds eye in the same show and Like a Dragon pirate trailer which we have already seen. Not much newly announced

Only 1 PS Studio game gets announced.
Saros was nice to see, but you need more than that

If you want to know a good show. Go to youtube watch E3 2015/2016/2017… Nothing to be disconnected to, just use your brain. PS gamers want to see NEW games announced at there shows. Especially from PS Studios

 

[rkofan87]

colin is spot on with this take too much impatient bitching going on right now.

 

[Fabieter]

And Sony obviously doesn't want players to be overly excited over it's games at some random point in February.

There is a fundamental problems with big exciting shows for Sony:
1. This excitement will not last long and will be quickly overwritten in week or two by next batch of news on internet. Brain has limited capacity and information overload led to shorter attention span when things are replaced and forgotten much faster.
2. Nature doesn't like to reward simply for repetion, so any excitement builds a resistance, making it harder to get excited again. The higher the excitement spike, the bigger the resistance, leading to a burn-out of interest
3. Sony goal is to sell games, not excite fans, so the whole excitement part should be structured to get interest and maintain it all the way to preorder/launch
4. People, on other hand, became overexposed and with their short attention spam become junkies, seeking another spike of excitement and even actively demanding it, even if it's detrimental to long-term interest

The whole notion "make a grand show on E3, feed some news to keep flame over slow summer month and then sell games in autumn" does not work in internet era where information flow are so high that any excitement overwritten and effect dies in mere weeks.

We had years of bad shows with the excuse that Sony doesnt announce games to early anymore. We are in 2025 now and they do exactly that. If they want to do those short cycles than announce the games and release it like six month after it but they don't do that either.

 

[captainnapalm]

I didn't even know there was a state of play - I never watch them but usually find out about them because there are a whole bunch of new trailers around - but I've not seen anything.

 

[Wildebeest]

I've got more than enough games to play, but none of the types of games I play are likely to featured on a "state of play".

 

[Felessan]

The fact is people expect to be excited during these events and this latest State of Play did not deliver on that expectation. It had way more games I would personally play than Xbox's last Developer Direct, but Xbox's Direct delivered excitement in a way the SoP did not.

This is what I called excitement junkies. Those that doesn't want just some good news, they want "shock and awe" news to keep unreasonable dose of dopamine.
SoP showed quite a good amount of games, some of them completely new and desirable and I was more than happy with things showed.
But astroturfing junkies wanted excitement on the level of parade of many 1st party with gameplay or, that is even worse, Bloodborne remake. These just completely lost touch with reality and would fantasize about most crazy stuff just to get their shot of "shock and awe". And these guys will continue, because fantasies still bring a shot, although heavily discounted, so they will imagine crazy shows with unrealistic expectations only to get disappointed by actual delivery.

And for Sony, as explained above, it's unfavorable chain of events, it wants your excitement focused on the game and grow steadily until it peaked at game launch.

We had years of bad shows with the excuse that Sony doesnt announce games to early anymore. We are in 2025 now and they do exactly that. If they want to do those short cycles than announce the games and release it like six month after it but they don't do that either.

These "bad shows" gave us goty and number of goty candidates. And had no problem with delivering message and promoting games shown.
Probably you should keep your expectations in check what shows are about. It's not really about you getting shot of excitement to forget about it week later.

 

[Vlodril]

He is right in that people have unrealistic expectations. As he said the SOP's are not E3's. The make multiple ones per year. Hell in the last year the shown 3 new first party single player games. 2 of them from their biggest studios (heretic, yotei and saros now). People just love to bitch online (not only in the gaming sphere obviously but about anything under the sun).