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Pushsquare, “Reaction: PS5 Livestreams Are No Longer Speaking to the Fans Who Built the Brand”

Banjo64

cumsessed
Sony don’t owe their ‘legacy’ fans anything. To me Nintendo and Sony hand in hand was always the combination. My personal thoughts are that their current path is a narrow one, it doesn’t appeal to me personally, however it’s clearly the most profitable path for Sony.

They are still making games that I want to play: Ratchet and Clank, Sackboy, Returnal, Gran Turismo 7 and Astrobot. I know these will be high quality, polished games.

To be honest, seeing it listed out like that, makes me want to consider buying another PS5.

I think for me I’d happily leave Santa Monica’s output, and I wouldn’t touch anything TLoU, nor Insomniac’s Marvel. But there’s still enough there at this point to justify a purchase. Just my personal opinion but it’s the current direction of those 3 studios in particular that rankles.
 
It’s sad to see but as others have said it seems to be the way of the industry. Just look at the top played games on Twitch, it’s the same GaaS forever and everyone wants a bigger slice of the pie
 

MacReady13

Member
Sony turning their backs on quirky fun Japanese games is what killed my interest in Playstation. Tokyo Jungle, Gravity Rush, Shadow of the Colussus, the Wild Arms games, Freedom Wars, Soul Sacrifice, etc were the types of experiences that I used to look forward to from Sony. Now it's all agenda driven western garbage that takes hundreds of millions and 7~ years to make.

I don't think it'll ever improve until an ex-developer CEO with some passion about gaming returns, or they move the HQ out of California.
100% spot on. They decided big budget was what they wanted. I’m all for story driven games but spending what they are is insane. Let’s get some more of those quirky, weird and fun games they used to make. They’ve lost the plot. Badly.
 

FunkMiller

Member
Fat Jim is responsible for the move away from the core Playstation product, and into the realms of nonstop GaaS, and PC ports.

Mark my old man words… in a few years we’ll be dissecting the fall of PlayStation and blaming him the same way we blame Fatter Phil now for Xbox's demise.
 
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kyussman

Member
Surely the people that built the brand are aging out at this point,I was on board for the PS1 launch and I'm 51 in a few weeks......and yea,current gaming trends are unattractive to me,but it seems younger gamers are all in on GAAS and good multiplayer games.At this point I need AAA games to really innovate to get me excited to game,sequels and remakes aren't gonna bring me back to PlayStation,and as an older guy I'm also more sensitive to the woke ideology infecting gaming,again younger people seem conditioned to this nonsense and don't find it as offensive as I do,lol.....see sales of Spider-Man 2.
 

DryvBy

Gold Member
Sony turning their backs on quirky fun Japanese games is what killed my interest in Playstation. Tokyo Jungle, Gravity Rush, Shadow of the Colussus, the Wild Arms games, Freedom Wars, Soul Sacrifice, etc were the types of experiences that I used to look forward to from Sony. Now it's all agenda driven western garbage that takes hundreds of millions and 7~ years to make.

I don't think it'll ever improve until an ex-developer CEO with some passion about gaming returns, or they move the HQ out of California.

Sony's first party has been abysmal and I'd say that for every company outside of Nintendo. And Nintendo isn't too far up my list either, given the Switch is mostly a remaster and remake showcase.

Every company needs to have more smaller projects going in between big ones. One thing Sony has done right is renting devs for 3rd party production on the platform. Stellar Blade is a legit terrific action game and an example of why I still enjoy this generation.
 
It's partially true.

The next 4 years of Hermen's tenure will be a good assessment of whether this trend consolidates or has some middle ground.

The two CEOs structure should prevent this.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
So, a year where they have exclusive Silent Hill and FF7 titles, and are pushing a new Kojima joint coming soon isn't leaning hard on Playstation's past?
And of course their big holiday release is mascot platformer filled with call-backs to the platform and franchise characters...

This has been the most traditionalist Playstation line-up in a long, long, time.

Hell, this year generally has been the most JRPG-centric year in literally decades. Granblue, FF7r, Dragon's Dogma 2, Elden Ring DLC all in the first half of the year! Bolstered by character action games like Stellar Blade and Rise Of The Ronin...

Sorry but making contentions like the one in the OP really make me wonder whether these people have any affinity for Playstation historically whatsoever. Are they perhaps confusing it with Xbox? Where for decades their output was built around the same 3 or 4 annual or bi-annual franchises?
 
Era of many great, cinematic, single-player oriented games is long gone. Companies cannot afford to invest hundreds of millions of $ into games that cannot be monetized aside from buying the box.
 

King Dazzar

Member
Regardless of who are or aren't the core players who built the brand. I have no doubt Sony will not be happy with the generally negative feedback from the SoP as a whole. If Concord then fails to do well too.... I think it's great that Astro Bot got such a warm reception, if nothing else reminding them of what some of their customers love. Lets hope they kick things up a notch around Pro's release.
 

Bernardougf

Member
Sony really lucked out with microsoft completely shitting the bed this gen ... this gaas chasing nonsense would have been their doom if MS had their shit together and would be releasing great single player experiences, with the PRO consoles in the corner and this shit lineup sony has I would be very much tempted to say fuck you to ps5 pro and jump on the xbox pro (if it have existed). But in the chase of shitty trends MS chose the worst one with gamepass.. and now.. we have to content with Sony and their gaas... fucking horrible waist of money of a gen.
 
You can't bitch about Playstation not having enough visually stunning games this generation while also stating that game development takes way too long. It doesn't compute

This year, Playstation could potentially release 3 exclusives as GOTY contenders(HD2,FF7R,Astro). If we talking about people who built the brand, this year does a great job encapsulating the variety the PS2 and PS3 used to offer
 

Elios83

Member
That some people cry online because they don't get the announcements they want when they want is pretty much irrelevant to them.
They need to cater to new audiences and have more successes like Helldivers2 and Destiny even if that's not what the old guard 35+years old fans want.

They have also not abandoned the old single player focused productions, Astrobot for example seems fantastic and among the best you can get in the platform genre.
It's just that these productions take 5-6 years to be developed and most of them will be ready deep into the second half of the PS5 lifecycle (which is not much different from what happened on PS4....people have really short memories and select what they want to remember).
 
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Fat Jim is responsible for the move away from the core Playstation product, and into the realms of nonstop GaaS, and PC ports.

Mark my old man words… in a few years we’ll be dissecting the fall of PlayStation and blaming him the same way we blame Fatter Phil now for Xbox's demise.
We can only hope for sone sort of cult revival like what has happened with vinyl
 
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twilo99

Member
What the fuck? No they don't, they need to expand and appeal to new generations without shunning the fans they already have.

Replacing instead of expanding is moronic.

It’s simply more expensive to expand rather than replace.
 

twilo99

Member
Over 50% of Sonys revenue is from around 10 GaaS titles, most of which started during ps3/ps4 era

So no…the most casual audiences that made up half of PlayStations success are in the GaaS space

Funny thing is, those gamers aren’t hardcore and aren’t vocal and don’t even watch showcase shows or state of plays

The cinematic single player boxed sales in Spain type are the most passionate and vocal ones
 

Allandor

Member
I watched the recent presentation and concluded that I was probably better off playing old games (especially those from the PS4 era) because the industry doesn't make games that I want to play any longer.

AAA releases lost my interest this generation and there just aren't enough indie games to keep me coming back.
The only reason I still want a PS5 is to play ps4 games with a silent console. The ps4 pro I have is just to loud to enjoy playing on it.
 

Killjoy-NL

Banned
What the fuck? No they don't, they need to expand and appeal to new generations without shunning the fans they already have.

Replacing instead of expanding is moronic.
But nothing is being replaced.

The Gaas strategy is to add more diversity to the Playstation library, rather than releasing singleplayer after singleplayer game.
 

SkylineRKR

Member
The problem is Sony has just released Spiderman 2 last fall. And they already released a new Horizon (+DLC), God of War, Ratchet and GT game this gen. Which means sequels to those won't come any time soon, but perhaps late 2025 or somewhere in 2026. Returnal is also 3 years old by now, and this year might be the time to announce a sequel or new game.

The issues here are the no shows of Naughty Dog, which is still absent on PS5 as Sony's flagship studio. And maybe Sucker Punch, though GoT came out really late into the PS4 life (mere months before the PS5 itself in fact). These studios likely won't make GaaS games, ND even shut down their Factions project.

But looking past the awful State of Play, this year saw PS5 getting Rise of the Ronin, Granblue Fantasy, Stellar Blade, FFVII Rebirth already. And these are just the exclusives. I am sure more core games will be announced in due time and eventually ND, Sucker Punch, Bluepoint and Housemarque will announce something. Studios like Firesprite and Bungie (since Destiny) were never on this board, as long as Sony's main studios don't dabble with this GaaS shit I see not much of an issue yet.

I am all for lowering budgets for games, and favor gameplay instead of details and chasing realism, essentially cutting down dev time and costs. My problem with the industry in general is the long dev cycles, and the forced pandering by shits like Sweet Baby.
 

Loxus

Member
Opinions are great and all but there is a reason none of us are running a billion dollar company.

We talk about Sony is out of touch and gamers want single player games. But yet, it's the gamers who are playing and spending more and more on multi-player games.
jeDq8Ak.jpeg


Why don't we blame the gamers?
Cause looking at that chart is making these so called single player gamers look like hypocrites.


You know what else amazes me about this gamers don't want multi-player games?
All the top PS3 and PS4 single player games had multi-player.

The Last of Us,
Max Payne 3,
Uncharted 2, 3 & 4
Red Dead Redemption 1 & 2,
Grand Theft Auto 4 & 5,
Grand Turismo,
The list goes on and on.

Multi-player didn't stop these single player games from being successful or impacted their quality. In fact, multi-player added value to single player games. Some gamers even brought those games to play the multi-player only.


Another thing, Naughty Dog has been putting multi-player in a lot of their games for years, then gamers at all surprise that they were working on TLoU2 multi-player. I don't get it, are gamers suffering from alzheimer's or something?
 

Punished Miku

Human Rights Subscription Service
Sony can do whatever they need to do. I just know that it became incredibly obvious as early as 2021 that I dont want to focus on it. All the signs have been there for years now but people are really slow to acknowledge things sometimes. Just the complete lack of communication, destruction of E3 show culture, price raising with limited paid upgrade paths was enough for me to see some large red flags pretty early on. People love it though. Sony consumer brand loyalty is on par with Apple this gen.
 

Markio128

Gold Member
I think the sad fact of the matter is that us old-skool gamers are becoming a rare commodity in the grand scheme of things. We’re kind of like the old men shaking their fist at the clouds, trying to convince our kids that Pink Floyd are better than Taylor Swift (they are).

Of course Sony are going to try and appeal to the most recent gen - the ones who are effectively providing Sony with enough money to spend on the less frequent big-budget games.

Do I like it? Nope. But then, I don’t like the top 40 anymore either. In fact, I couldn’t tell you a single song from the top 40. I was all over that shit in the 80’s and 90’s.

It wouldn’t surprise me if more people bought the last GTA game for the multiplayer portion.
 
I’m not sure if that’s the problem. People seem to love Helldivers 2.

I’d think most people just expect quality output when they see the PS Studios logo, and then they’re presented with something like Concord which looks like the most generic by-the-numbers title filled with obvious DEI nonsense.
I was going to post something similar but you said it better than I could have.

I’d just add that we have yet to see more than like one first-party from scratch PS5-only single player games on the level of LoU or Ghost of Tsushima. Which I think is the primary issue.
 

T4keD0wN

Member
Pushsquares web traffic is down so they deflect the blame to Playstation for not giving them more content they can lazily replicate.
Sad Gordon Ramsay GIF by Hell's Kitchen
 
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ShirAhava

Plays with kids toys, in the adult gaming world
Lol.

The best PS3 games were either mutiplayer-focused or had a multiplayer mode.

This! PSN free online days were the best

MG4 Online and Uncharted 2 muti were some of the best times I had with my PS3

Along with Wipeout, Warhawk/Starhawk and Motorstorm

PS3 was a very balanced console
 
I feel like PS peaked during the ps4 era and it will only further get lacklustre going forward. Ps6 etc.. who really cares? It’ll be GaaS and probably get 1 title per studio and that’s it.
 

SkylineRKR

Member
What are you smoking?

He isn't wrong but with many of its top selling games it wasn't the main draw. Uncharted had MP from 2 onward and I doubt many players bought it for this mode alone. MP was usually some side activity. At some point even God of War and Tomb Raider came up with multiplayer modes.

However, PS3 had a good rate of output with games not being too bloated yet. Uncharted had an appropriate runtime and was fit for replays. So while there were games like Warhawk and MAG around, there was also an entire Uncharted trilogy (+TLOU and DLC), 2 Infamous games, a Motorstorm trilogy etc.
 

RickMasters

Member
Gen x and millennials “built” the brand but Sony needs to move on…


You are not wrong. There comes a point when all these companies shift their focus to the younger audience. It’s just the nature of businesses that are entertainment focused.
 

Boss Mog

Member
Gen x and millennials “built” the brand but Sony needs to move on…
That may be true, but the thing is Gen Z and Gen Alpha, don't really like home consoles, they're on their phones mostly, on social media, but if they do end up gaming on an other device it's most likely a Switch or a PC. The people that still actually buy PlayStation console games are Gen X and Millennials, they're also the people with the most purchasing power, so really if Sony wants money that's who they should continue to cater to and not to people who will mostly never care about their products.
 

Represent.

Banned
Lmao, how can anyone on this forum disagree with this article?

Jesus - learn to criticize your fav console maker. Otherwise they will just keep doing the same thing.

So, all these hero shooters, the GAAS push, generic games like concord, endless remakes and remasters, hideous, last-gen looking games coming out of Japan.. that inspires you?

Sony used to bring the heat with every show. Stop.
 

Sushi_Combo

Member
Unfortunately they are trying to capture the next generation of young folks, which do not prioritize Single player games when they fire up their systems.
 
Sony is also getting lapped by the likes of Ubisoft and Ninja Theory when it comes to graphics ...imagine that

Bruh you did not just give Ninja Theory a W here when then only accomplished those graphics by making a LITERAL 5-hour walking simulator tech demo.

Because that's basically what Hellblade 2 is. And I say that as someone who had a lot of faith in the game to, well, be more of a game and improve upon the first. Somehow it's worst than the first in combat, puzzles and story. How do you regress that much with a sequel?

This is why I liked Jack Tretton, Adam Boyes, and Shawn Layden, even though they'll never reach Kaz/Shuhei levels for me personally. They acknowledged that it was about fostering the ecosystem with smaller titles that they knew wouldn't sell mutli-million copies, but brought variety and depth to the Playstation catalogue. Now it's very much become "if you don't like the cinematic story games or live service games, why are you even on Playstation?" which isn't a healthy attitude to have for a platform, in my opinion at least.

And yea, agree about their Vita studios. Bend had/has a ton of potential but they got thrown directly into the fire to really nobody's benefit in the long run.

The good news is, Astro Bot could be the start of Sony bringing that type of stuff back to the ecosystem WRT 1P-developed efforts. Yes games like it won't do Spiderman 2 numbers, but they don't need to. More importantly, they shouldn't be expected to in order to justify their existence.

Like it's been said, these type of games add variety to the offerings and even if they collectively (either with other games of their ilk, or with bigger games taken into consideration) only stimulate say an extra million console sales over a generation, that's still 1 million systems that may not have been sold otherwise.
 
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