There are certain exceptions like It Takes Two and Hades. I thought I mentioned them in my post. It Takes Two was my GOTY. RE8 I played religiously for a month before Ratchet. Beat it 5 times and got SSS in all mercenaries missions.
But overall, I find it very hard to stick to non-sony games. I dont think it's the quality either. I think Avengers, Guardians and Halo are all very competent games, but the pacing is off, and the games just dont hook me. Guardians I stuck with the longest. Around 6-8 hours because it has excellent naughty dog quality writing and setpieces but the pacing is so off in that game i just got tired of it. Just the other day, I had a choice to play another walking/dream sequence or get right in the middle of the action in Returnal. I chose Returnal.
People dont give Sony games enough credit. Their gameplay loop is addicting and their combat is top notch. So even after you finish the game, I find myself playing them for another 50-60 hours. Just like I do for From Software games. I played nothing but Demon Souls for 3 months on PS5. Beat it 20 times. I play every souls game for 100 hours. I will be there for ER on Day 1.
I might get some crap here for this since I do play on all platforms, and like everything, but I think this statement is partially correct.
I am playing Halo Infinite now and, while I will likely finish it, it's .... not good. I honestly don't understand how it got the ratings it did. It feels like a student project to me quite often, and the writing and tone are all over the place. I don't understand the mix of Chief trying to be the "bad ass one liner" type character that is cool to 12 year olds, mixed with the "We are big and mean" Atriox following baddies, and then the total glibness of "The Weapon." On top of that the gameplay has the same weakness all of the Halo games do, and that's that you can basically melee your way through 90% of it, even while bullets are being poured into you. You can basically kill everyone that's hurting you with the melee attack. It's incredibly easy, and brain dead. Only bosses need some form of running and gunning. I don't know if The Flood or something similar come back yet, which would change that a bit but still. The game needs serious help.
What Sony has been able to master over the decades is simply producing world class games, over and over .... and over. My favorite is still Nintendo but it's a different style of video game that they make. Focusing ruthlessly on content is the actual secret to Sony's success, and that's why people like Phil Spencer don't seem to get it. It's not about system power (Switch is proof of this). It's not about speeds and feeds, or subscriptions. It's about being able to
execute. This is true in any software house. We are all working with the same tools, more or less. But some people can make brilliance while some have trouble even getting a product out the door.
And that's why games like Ratchet and Clank, or Horizon FW look better than the competition. It has nothing to do with the PS5 hardware, as the PS5 outside the SSD hardware decompression scheme has almost nothing that sets it apart from the competition, and it gets smoked by high end PC GPUs obviously. But it's not about the hardware. It's about the
craftspeople. Sony's teams know how to get the most out of their console hardware, more than the competition.
Sony is out executing the competition for the style of games they do, and that's not something you can just throw money at and solve for. It takes
know how and
experience. I know there will be a certain sub group that doesn't like this, but the proof is in the pudding as they say.
I definitely think there is a large group of people that get it. That's why sales numbers are what they are, and what they likely will continue to be.
