• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Has the PS5 already cemented itself as the worst Playstation generation in history?

What's Sony's worst generation?

  • Playstation

    Votes: 13 1.6%
  • Playstation 2

    Votes: 8 1.0%
  • Playstation 3

    Votes: 211 25.7%
  • Playstation 4

    Votes: 23 2.8%
  • Playstation 5

    Votes: 567 69.0%

  • Total voters
    822
All I can say is that's recency bias (as in you're remembering how that console ended, instead of how it started and evolved throughout it's lifecycle).

I owned a 360 and didn't even see any reason to own a PS3 until the very end of that generation. And at that point it was only to play the 1st party games - it made no sense to even attempt to play anything 3rd party on the console.

And miss me with the Ubisoft clone bollox. Is Astro Bot a Ubisoft clone? Returnal? Gran Turismo 7? Helldivers 2? Sackboy? Demons Souls?

Count up all of the PS5 1st party games thus far, what percentage of those are "Ubisoft clones"?

At least try to be sincere.
Well, I actually had a PS3 longer than you did so maybe you are misremembering. MGS4, Uncharted 1-3 and TLOU, Resistance 1-3, GoW3 + Ascension, KZ2-3, Demon's Souls, Journey, Infamous 1-2, LBP 1-2, Warhawk, MAG, Twisted Metal, 3D Dot Game Heroes, Puppeteer, and that's just exclusives I owned and loved off the top of my head. Then if you start adding in multiplats, it's really over. We got 2 Elder Scrolls, 2 GTAs + RDR, 2 Fallouts, and a bunch more.

If I could only play everything that released (with servers still up) on PS3 2006-2013 or PS5 2020-2027 or whatever, I'd take PS3 by a mile.

I didn't say everything on PS5 was a ubisoft clone, I said there's too many of them and "not enough else".

And I'm totally sincere. Why would I not be?
 

TintoConCasera

I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
What baffles me is how they used to have many franchises as exclusives while they weren't very popular, like Yakuza, Monster Hunter or Shin Megami Tensei and even FromSoft games but now that they are super popular they've gone multiplatform.

Wonder what happened there.
 

nial

Gold Member
The point people are trying to make isnt just pure numbers. But also unique new IPs. Compare PS3 to PS5 for new IPs. And not just the big budget games. Also, include small scale games and VR2 vs Move.
The games I singled out are not particularly of big budget, Until Dawn and LHA are pretty boutique in comparison to most of the other stuff, all while Rise of the Ronin and Stellar Blade are new IPs. PS Move vs. PSVR2 is fair, but Sony's PS Move games are BY FAR some of the worst PlayStation first-party games, so it's not like you're missing out there.
2, 4 and 5 sure don't.
Don't care about them, I don't think anyone ever brings up the remasters when talking about Sony's output last year.
 

Alan Wake

Member
Too early to tell, honestly. Some of my favourite games of the PS360 era came very late, and two of them even the same year Xbox One and PS4 launched (BioShock Infinite and The Last of Us). But I agree this generation hasn't been that exciting so far. There are plenty of good games to play every year, I'm keeping myself busy, but I miss being blown away or even surprised. I was pleasantly surprised by Indiana Jones last year, that was a kind of game I didn't expect and it's obviously coming to PS5 soon. But overall, a decent but not great gen.
 

ArtHands

Thinks buying more servers can fix a bad patch
This is hardly arguable. The Jim + Hermen Show has been quite something: remakes and remasters, overpriced games, GaaS, cancelations, studio shutdowns, lack of communication, moronic acquisitions, PSVR 2 abandonment...

And this extravaganza is far from finished. Coming next: Bend, Haven, and MM shutdown, Fairgames memes, and disappointing Wolverine sales. For dessert, the Bungie situation, which will explode in 2-3 years, max.

Sony will bet everything on Intergalactic becoming the new hit by the end of this gen.

Why do you think they are bringing their games over to PC so fast and rapidly? They needed PC to help sustain them.
 

analog_future

Resident Crybaby
I'm seeing a lot of these guys suddenly saying the PS3 generation was the best. Talk about rewriting history.

It was probably only the best to for them because it was the only generation when Xbox had a fighting chance and didn't get absolutely destroyed.



And none of those games managed to significantly move the needle or were defined as the generations must have games at the time.

Were you even on this forum at the time? Most of those games got destroyed in terms of their reception. Particularly the likes of the first motorstorm (didn't live up to the tech demo) and heavenly sword. Demons Souls went largely unnoticed for years after it's initial release, there's a reason it was a cult classic.

It's like you forget that all of that stuff was competing against stuff like gears of war, halo, TES Oblivion, bioshock, mass effect, PGR, fable, peak Forza, Lost Planet etc. Then there was the added bonus of the fact that the vast majority of 3rd party games ran really poorly (along with the fact that even most of those 1st party games you listed ran poorly), which just further compounded matters.

So sorry sir, you seem to just be going back and looking at a list, but the context of what was actually happening at the time is important.

The PS3 almost wiped Sony from existence, I don't know who some of you are trying to kid.

You've got to be kidding me lol. Uncharted 2 and God of War III didn't move the needle?


Ya'll have lost your god damn minds
 

GHG

Member
The PS3 gen was the best because that's the one where Xbox had a fighting chance?

Confused James Franco GIF

For you and your colleagues, yes.

How You Doin Kiss GIF


We've got people scraping and bringing up heavenly sword and motorstorm? What planet do you have to be living on to do that? Certainly not the one that actually existed at the time.

This was the reception heavenly sword was getting:

This game already got a 6, so surely the review stands. Damn, does PS3 really have so little games that some of have to defend every single one that comes along?

Motorstorm:

Looks good for a PSP game.

the mud looks different but the cars look like they're from a ps2 game :/

Resistance:

looks okay

Hmmm, that clip reminded me very much of Goldeneye 64. Weird.

And people want to say even the early PS3 era was better?

200.gif


The devopment environment was horrible and as a result devs were struggling to get decent looking and running games out of the machine, even including first party and exclusive games.

You've got to be kidding me lol. Uncharted 2 and God of War III didn't move the needle?


Ya'll have lost your god damn minds

Uncharted 2 is defined by many as the turning point for the PS3 generation. As in its when things started to get good.
 
Last edited:

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
What baffles me is how they used to have many franchises as exclusives while they weren't very popular, like Yakuza, Monster Hunter or Shin Megami Tensei and even FromSoft games but now that they are super popular they've gone multiplatform.

Wonder what happened there.
Greed.

You compare their PS3 and PS2 sales to their PS4 sales and all of a sudden they went from selling 2-5 million to selling 10-20 million units with the PS4. And yet they decided that was not enough, and chased after not just GaaS trends but also the PC market and subscription fads. Horizon FW's sales fell off a cliff after it was added to PS+ just a year in. According to Sony themselves.

They all want more. Literally 50 million PS+ subscribers and they decided that wasnt enough and threw their biggest game under the bus just for some more subscribers.
 
Last edited:

James Sawyer Ford

Gold Member
What baffles me is how they used to have many franchises as exclusives while they weren't very popular, like Yakuza, Monster Hunter or Shin Megami Tensei and even FromSoft games but now that they are super popular they've gone multiplatform.

Wonder what happened there.

The cost of modern development doesn’t allow any games to be entirely exclusive anymore

These aren’t cheap games to make like they were in the past, and some of these companies have been on the verge of bankruptcy in the past

Why do you want them exclusive and why should a ps5 owner care?
 
Last edited:

mdzapeer

Member
PS4 is my vote, it's the last console I bought from Sony and sat gathering dust mostly, even the PS3 is still hooked up with the unique move games, and the amazing PS3 gen library. The PS4 was only good for bloodborne.

Edit: PS3 also had free online.
 
Last edited:

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
You've got to be kidding me lol. Uncharted 2 and God of War III didn't move the needle?


Ya'll have lost your god damn minds
Wasn't Uncharted 2 recently named the most influential PS game or something? Was it IGN? Gamespot?

Uncharted 2, GOW3, KZ2, Uncharted 3, Infamous and TLOU are a huge reason for why Sony finished that generation strong and created a massive amount of goodwill among gamers who were frustrated with MS abandoning core gamers after Kinect launched in 2010.

Maybe some people have a memory of a goldfish but this was posted everywhere back in the day. Not just on gaf. The PS4 wasn't an accident. People wanted to play sequels to KZ, Uncharted, Infamous, TLOU and GOW.

zl10SZ0.jpg
 

TMLT

Member
There's no way anybody could only own a PS3 that generation and be satisfied, the opposite is true for the PS5.

That says more about the state of Xbox in those respective eras than anything else though.

And none of those games managed to significantly move the needle or were defined as the generations must have games at the time.

Uncharted 2 and God Of War 3 were among the hottest and most critically acclaimed games of their year, wtf? I still vividly remember how crazy people went over that Uncharted 2 E3 2009 demo. Demons Souls essentially spawned a genre, LBP got heaps of praise too. By 2010 the general perception was the PS3 had moved ahead in terms of exclusives while the 360 was still better for multiplats.
 
Last edited:

GHG

Member
Uncharted 2 and God Of War 3 were among the hottest and most critically acclaimed games of their year, wtf? I still vividly remember how crazy people went over that Uncharted 2 E3 2009 demo. Demons Souls essentially spawned a genre, LBP got heaps of praise too. By 2010 the general perception was the PS3 had moved ahead in terms of exclusives while the 360 was still better for multiplats.

I said above uncharted 2 was the game that was the start of the turn around.

So if that's the start of the turn around, why are people listing games that came out before that point as if they were games that were worth making a fuss over?

They weren't then and they certainly aren't now. Don't even make me go back and dig up what the reception was like for the original uncharted game at the time.
 

TintoConCasera

I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
The cost of modern development doesn’t allow any games to be entirely exclusive anymore

These aren’t cheap games to make like they were in the past, and some of these companies have been on the verge of bankruptcy in the past
Yeah you are right on that.

I wish games weren't so expensive to make nowadays. Console manufacturers could have kept having console-defining exclusives while the gamers would just get more games to play. Maybe in a few years things settle down, once the graphics race is over.

Why do you want them exclusive and why should a ps5 owner care?
Not me lol, but lots of people care about that stuff. Seen many posts be like "this exclusive being ported elsewhere devaluates the console" or "this is what doomed Xbox!". Kinda agree with the first one, but still, it takes away so little value that who cares really. I prefer PC for multiplats (99% of games nowadays) but still can see the value of a console, mostly being the ease of use.
 

James Sawyer Ford

Gold Member
Yeah you are right on that.

I wish games weren't so expensive to make nowadays. Console manufacturers could have kept having console-defining exclusives while the gamers would just get more games to play. Maybe in a few years things settle down, once the graphics race is over.


Not me lol, but lots of people care about that stuff. Seen many posts be like "this exclusive being ported elsewhere devaluates the console" or "this is what doomed Xbox!". Kinda agree with the first one, but still, it takes away so little value that who cares really. I prefer PC for multiplats (99% of games nowadays) but still can see the value of a console, mostly being the ease of use.

Games will only continue getting more costly to make, but if AI can help lessen the burden the growth in cost may slow down

I don’t think third party titles lessens the value at all. Xbox had many other problems causing its current situation, and PlayStation has always relied heavily on third party games you could play elsewhere
 

spookyfish

Member
What?

PS2 > PS5 > PS1 > PS4 > PS3

That’s my ranking so far. PS3 was their worst generation due to hardware and slow start, but it also allowed their first party to grow so it’s not like it was a bad gen, definitely the least successful PlayStation by far though with lots of growing pains
I love my PS3. Still have my 60GB Phat going strong. But the fact that a) I bought primarily to be a blu-ray player and b) the hardware issues it had—no scaler, difficult to program for—makes it the “worst” gen for me.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Its just a poll inflated by your peers

Who knew my peers were the vast majority on GAF, many of whom are prominent in most / all PS discussion here. 🤭


The facts and the poll.

Gotta love how the masquerade of fanboys downplaying and dismissing every criticism of Sony gets destroyed in one poll. We are not just the vocal minority, they are.

why-would-you-say-something-so-controversial-yet-so-brave.png
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
The games I singled out are not particularly of big budget, Until Dawn and LHA are pretty boutique in comparison to most of the other stuff, all while Rise of the Ronin and Stellar Blade are new IPs. PS Move vs. PSVR2 is fair, but Sony's PS Move games are BY FAR some of the worst PlayStation first-party games, so it's not like you're missing out there.

Don't care about them, I don't think anyone ever brings up the remasters when talking about Sony's output last year.
To be honest, it's a big grasp of straws when your list (or anyone elses) has tons of remasters and remakes. Your short list has a bunch of them already. And one is a Lego game.

But if you look at Analog Futres PS3 list of tons of games, many are new IPs. I dont think even one is a remaster or remake (skimmed it fast).
 
Last edited:

MiguelItUp

Member
For me personally, it felt like...

PS1 strong strong exclusives
PS2 REAL strong exclusives
PS3 rough start strong exclusives over time
PS4 rough start little/no exclusives
PS5 rough start little/no exclusives

Both PS4 Pro and PS5 Pro felt like moments where I asked why? Especially PS5 Pro. For me personally, it's my Demon's Souls console, lol.
 
I said above uncharted 2 was the game that was the start of the turn around.

So if that's the start of the turn around, why are people listing games that came out before that point as if they were games that were worth making a fuss over?

They weren't then and they certainly aren't now. Don't even make me go back and dig up what the reception was like for the original uncharted game at the time.
If by reception you mean critics, Uncharted 1 is sitting at 88 on metacritic. Higher than Helldivers 2 and Returnal, same score as Horizon 2.
 

64gigabyteram

Reverse groomer.
\\\


As has been pointed out several times in this thread already, the first 4 years of the PS3 generation included the following high-profile exclusives:

  • Resistance: Fall of Man
  • Resistance 2
  • MotorStorm
  • MotorStorm: Pacific Rift
  • MotorStorm 3D Rift
  • Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction
  • Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty
  • Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time
  • Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
  • Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
  • Ridge Racer 7
  • Gran Turismo 5
  • Wipeout HD
  • LittleBigPlanet
  • Heavenly Sword
  • Demon's Souls
  • Killzone 2
  • Infamous
  • Heavy Rain
  • God of War III

... and probably more I'm missing.


It looks to me like you're the one with recency bias and are remembering the PS3 generation incorrectly.
you can say what you want about a lot of these games but you cannot deny that the vast majority of them are only playable on PS3. Actual exclusives.

How many PS5 exclusives do we have for the first 5 years of PS5? stuff that neither PS4 nor PC owners can play...?
 

GHG

Member
Well, I actually had a PS3 longer than you did so maybe you are misremembering. MGS4, Uncharted 1-3 and TLOU, Resistance 1-3, GoW3 + Ascension, KZ2-3, Demon's Souls, Journey, Infamous 1-2, LBP 1-2, Warhawk, MAG, Twisted Metal, 3D Dot Game Heroes, Puppeteer, and that's just exclusives I owned and loved off the top of my head. Then if you start adding in multiplats, it's really over. We got 2 Elder Scrolls, 2 GTAs + RDR, 2 Fallouts, and a bunch more.

If you liked the early gen PS3 exclusive titles then I can't change that, but most people didn't think they were up to scratch and were enjoying games of a much higher standard on the competition.

Also, please don't even bother to reference 3rd party games on that console. They all ran like ass, and some of the 3rd party games you listed were so bad they were unplayable due to issues with crashes and locking up the console. The whole thing was so bad in fact that it caused Sony to overhaul their certification/QA process for games releasing on their platform.

If I could only play everything that released (with servers still up) on PS3 2006-2013 or PS5 2020-2027 or whatever, I'd take PS3 by a mile.

I didn't say everything on PS5 was a ubisoft clone, I said there's too many of them and "not enough else".

And I'm totally sincere. Why would I not be?

If "too many of them" regarding the "Ubisoft clones" is 3 out of dozens of games then so be it.
 

Jakk

Member
I'm seeing a lot of these guys suddenly saying the PS3 generation was the best. Talk about rewriting history.

It was probably only the best to for them because it was the only generation when Xbox had a fighting chance and didn't get absolutely destroyed.



And none of those games managed to significantly move the needle or were defined as the generations must have games at the time.

Were you even on this forum at the time? Most of those games got destroyed in terms of their reception. Particularly the likes of the first motorstorm (didn't live up to the tech demo) and heavenly sword. Demons Souls went largely unnoticed for years after it's initial release, there's a reason it was a cult classic.

It's like you forget that all of that stuff was competing against stuff like gears of war, halo, TES Oblivion, bioshock, mass effect, PGR, fable, peak Forza, Lost Planet etc. Then there was the added bonus of the fact that the vast majority of 3rd party games ran really poorly (along with the fact that even most of those 1st party games you listed ran poorly), which just further compounded matters.

So sorry sir, you seem to just be going back and looking at a list, but the context of what was actually happening at the time is important.

The PS3 almost wiped Sony from existence, I don't know who some of you are trying to kid.
A lot of games on that list were generally well-received. I wasn't on this forum at that time so I don't know what people here were saying, but the fact is there's numerous games which ended up above or close to 90 metascore, like God of War 3, Killzone 2, LittleBigPlanet or Uncharted 1 & 2.

I'm not disputing the fact PS3 caused a lot of trouble for Sony, as they went with an exotic architecture and the price was high, but IMO they definitely delivered with games - that's what matters to me the most and in terms of games, I think PS3 was the best generation so far.
 

James Sawyer Ford

Gold Member
I'm not disputing the fact PS3 caused a lot of trouble for Sony, as they went with an exotic architecture and the price was high, but IMO they definitely delivered with games - that's what matters to me the most and in terms of games, I think PS3 was the best generation so far.

The point is most of the great ps3 games came out in the second half of that generation.

The first few years were ROUGH
 

TMLT

Member
I said above uncharted 2 was the game that was the start of the turn around.

So if that's the start of the turn around, why are people listing games that came out before that point as if they were games that were worth making a fuss over?

They weren't then and they certainly aren't now. Don't even make me go back and dig up what the reception was like for the original uncharted game at the time.

I'd say the turn around began with LBP and MGS4 the year before. I remember reading a review for LBP and thinking "well shit, the ps3 is actually getting some momentum finally"
 
Last edited:

Gamerguy84

Member
PS3 era for me. Still ended up enjoying it after my other console melted and I didn't know about extended warranty.

PS5 ranks middle but PS4 #1.
 
Probably yes, as exclusives go, but i bought it for multiplatform games as well so i'm satisfied with it, but no doubt it has less and less games you can only play on PS with each gen.
 

GHG

Member
If we had a launch aligned PS3 generation up to this point (inclusive of the 3rd party game issues where many of them skipped the platform entirely or had lengthy delays due to it being so bad) then some of you would be in full meltdown mode.

You don't realise how comfortable you have it now in comparison.
 
If you liked the early gen PS3 exclusive titles then I can't change that, but most people didn't think they were up to scratch and were enjoying games of a much higher standard on the competition.

Also, please don't even bother to reference 3rd party games on that console. They all ran like ass, and some of the 3rd party games you listed were so bad they were unplayable due to issues with crashes and locking up the console. The whole thing was so bad in fact that it caused Sony to overhaul their certification/QA process for games releasing on their platform.
I played through all of them just fine. Only Nitpick Neds need everything to be perfect to enjoy and finish a game. They still add to the quality of the library.

If "too many of them" regarding the "Ubisoft clones" is 3 out of dozens of games then so be it.
Now you're not being sincere.
 

Ramiro_Rodriguez

Neo Member
How can it be that the PS3 generation was for 25 % the worst?

When i look at the online part (Games+Services) alone can i name PS Plus, M.A.G., Starhawk, Warhawk, PS Home, free online Multiplayer, Games with 8er Co-op (Resistance 2), MMORPGs like DCUO or FFXI, Shooter with up to 60 Players (Resistance 2 and even Killzone 2 has modi with 32 players) and so on.
We got Games like the Ratchet & Clank games, The Last of Us I, Uncharted 1-3, rain, Unfinished Swan, LBP, Motorstorm, Resistance 1-3, Journey, Heavy Rain, flower, Demon’s Souls and much more.
Also PS Move (it was a cool "thing"/toy).

For me is the PS3 maybe the best generation, followed by the PS4, then comes the PS2, PS5 (all we got are mostly remasters and games that could run on a PS4) and then the PS1.
 

GHG

Member
I played through all of them just fine. Only Nitpick Neds need everything to be perfect to enjoy and finish a game. They still add to the quality of the library.

Dude, this isn't about nitpicking:





It was objectively the worst place to play games at the time.

Now you're not being sincere.

Ok, please list all the 1st party games released this gen thus far and highlight the "ubisoft clones".
 

Radical_3d

Member
If we had a launch aligned PS3 generation up to this point (inclusive of the 3rd party game issues where many of them skipped the platform entirely or had lengthy delays due to it being so bad) then some of you would be in full meltdown mode.

You don't realise how comfortable you have it now in comparison.
You guys keep bringing up the hardware and I say: you have no idea what makes a great generation.
 

Jakk

Member
The point is most of the great ps3 games came out in the second half of that generation.

The first few years were ROUGH
Like I said before, I agree the second half of PS3 gen was considerably better, but if the first half with games like God of War III, Uncharted 1 & 2, Killzone 2, LittleBigPlanet or Infamous was ROUGH, then I really struggle to find the right word for the first half of PS5 gen. If we start looking at multiplatform games, PS3/360 gen looks even better to me.
 

FR1908

Member
SNES (Sony soundchip) > > PS1 = PS2 > PS4 > PS3 = PS5

Sony consoles never disappoint when you compare them to what the others are doing. Only with the PS5 it seems that the Switch is actually the new PlayStation in terms of variety. The Switch happens to be the true successor of the PS1 & PS2 with an extra bonus: Nintendo games. I just need a Point Blank game with a light gun on the system to fill that gap too.
 
Dude, this isn't about nitpicking:





It was objectively the worst place to play games at the time.

Still played through it with no problem. It's still part of the library.
Ok, please list all the 1st party games released this gen thus far and highlight the "ubisoft clones".
If you can't see all the ubislop in so many of the 1st party games yourself, me just repeating the names of the games won't help you.
 
Top Bottom