i'm finding that more than simply catering to an audience, that publishers seem to now be pandering to them. watching the sony conference was like watching some sort of fanservice game where you have to rub half-naked girls to boost their stats. lily bergamo turning into let it die, and then also getting lost in the mix just seemed emblematic of that. meaning, i would think that a new exclusive title in which they care to name drop some guy would have a bigger impact, but instead it was just one of many grimdark games revealed in a row.
it was a real breath of fresh air when lbp3 was announced (and i thought it played wonderfully in the demo i had a shot at). the dead island 2 trailer, while completely unnecessary, was funny and bucked the trend of almost the entire conference. the same was sort of true of that whole fake letters segment, where grim fandango was revealed, but the execution of all that came across as self-congratulating.
and then they end the conference on fucking uncharted 4- a game they revealed last year and they don't even do a great job at it. people can spend time discussing the plot details or the look of the game, but what i saw was this drab, depressing look at the fifth game in a series that's seven years old. if there was any energy after the shitshow that was the powers reveal, it was sucked out of me right there.
and it didn't have to be that way! there are other things coming out! they could have shown more colorful titles, more japanese titles. what if they'd taken time to show off persona 5, or danganronpa 2, or final fantasy type-0?! these are things they actually have that are coming out i do not understand the fucking pandering to one audience.
microsoft on the other hand, hit more of a balancing act- and they have less systems, so they seemed genuinely interested in seeking a variety of games. there's the dark monster game in evolve, and your shooter game in cauladoody, but fuck they showed off a genuinely bright and passionate sunset overdrive, creative stuff like project spark, a new japanese ip in scalebound, and brought back phantom dust. just in the perception game, i felt like sony doesn't care about seeking a variety of tastes- just those who want to play artsy or gruesome film games, and it doesn't have to be that way.
back to nintendo, i also felt they had variety, but it obviously starts on a different scale. i guess devil's third and bayonetta count as their really dark/gruesome games, but there's a lot of middle ground between those and the light family stuff (kirby, yoshi), in smash bros., zelda, hyrule warriors, splatoon and xenoblade chronicles x. not all of those things will be games i'll buy (looking your way, yoshi), but there's definitely a breadth there that was missing elsewhere.
