GameCentral offers an overview of Thursday night’s State of Play and is disappointed at the lack of new first party game announcements.
Despite almost every State of Play, for the last several years, being a disappointment there was plenty of optimism left for the one on Thursday night, not least because it promised to be the longest one ever, outside of Sony’s not-E3 showcases.
Viewed from a distance it was very good, with a lot of exciting new games, but the one thing it was missing was anything new made by any of Sony’s internal, first party developers.
There weren’t many Sony published games of any kind but the few that were featured had either been announced previously or were made by external third party studios (well, technically we don’t know who’s making the God Of War remake trilogy but it’s unlikely to be Santa Monica Studio).
Without wanting to go over all ground all this stems from the fact that, a couple of years into the current generation, Sony suddenly got it into their heads that all their studios should pivot from primarily single-player games to making live service titles.
That proved to be a complete disaster and while it’s assumed that they’ve since reversed course they’ve never actually said so. Sony hardly talks about anything in the open anymore but while some optimists theorise that they have seen sense it takes at least five years to make a triple-A game and so there’s been chance yet for the change of plan – if it actually happened – to bear fruit.
Expert, exclusive gaming analysis
Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning.
The PlayStation 5 is six years old this year and most Sony studios have only released one game on the console. Some, like Days Gone maker Bend Studio, haven’t made anything new for the format at all. Even Naughty Dog hasn’t produced anything but remakes and remasters so far.
We’ve currently no clue what Bluepoint Games, Team Asobi, Polyphony Digital, or Media Molecule are working on at the moment (you can guess but they’ve not announced anything). Even Santa Monica Studio is a mystery as they only seem to be overseeing the two new God Of War games and haven’t announced a new title themselves since 2022’s Ragnarök.
Any hope that Sony would allow a peek behind the curtain during the latest State of Play was quickly dashed, with the vast majority of games being third party. Sony is publishing some of these, such as Kena: Scars Of Kosmora – a sequel to 2021’s not very good Kena: Bridge Of Spirits – but they’re not made by any of their internal studios.
Sucker Punch did unveil free DLC for Ghost Of Yōtei, but while Marathon, Saros, and Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls (which is not made by an internal developer) all looked good they’d already been announced some time ago. So we really learnt very little about what Sony themselves are planning for the future.
At this point it seems clear there’s never going to be a big unveiling of multiple new first party titles. The E3 days of three or four new games being announced at once are gone and this State of Play was perhaps the final proof of that.
That leaves a gaping hole in the PlayStation 5’s armoury but the only thing to do is take solace in the third party games that were showcased instead.
The John Wick game looked promising and the tsunami of Konami announcements was great, even if we wish the new Castlevania game had been a bigger budget 3D title.
Legacy Of Kain: Defiance Remastered was a surprise, as was current gen remaster Dead Or Alive 6: Last Round. Control: Resonant looked great (non-humanoid enemies in a Remedy game, at last!), Crimson Moon seemed promising, and the Rayman remaster continues to seem a very strange idea – given it wasn’t very good even 30 years ago.
Yakoh Shinobi Ops appeared to be a cross between Tenchu and Shadow Tactics: Blades Of The Shogun and, like Krafton’s bizarre chicken monster game Project Windless, seems to be a self-imposed PlayStation console exclusive.
With new looks at Star Wars: Galactic Racer and 007 First Light as well it was a good State of Play, it’s just that there was very little about it that was exclusive to PlayStation and nothing that suggested Sony’s first party output is ever going to ramp up beyond just one or two new games a year.
Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter.
To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.
For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.
