In early June, Sony released the first look at the Playstation 5 in a presentation ambitiously titled “The Future of Gaming Show” and, to be honest, it lived up to the name. At the time, no one was expecting finished gameplay or a price or even really a release date. Sony gave a slew of cinematic trailers (and some brief glimpses at gameplay) from every publisher from Capcom to Annapurna. That showcase made it feel like if you didn’t have a PS5, you would miss out on the next genre – and generation – defining games, whether that’ll be Ghostwire: Tokyo or Bugsnax. And then there was silence.
In the intervening months, pressure online steadily built with everyone asking the same two questions: what will this cost and when can I get one. Those questions were finally answered on September 16th. It will cost €399 for a digital only console and €499 if you want a disc drive. It will be released in Ireland on November 19th. Oddly though, after the most recent showcase, I find myself asking why I would buy it on release.
The September 16th showcase opened with a recap of “The Future of Gaming Show”. The montage of games presented then, gave the impression that we would be getting an entirely new catalogue of games, that they were picking up right where they left off, which turned out not to be the case. A majority of the games shown were just deeper dives into games that had been announced previously. Spider-Man: Miles Morales revealed some story-details about Miles’ mother running in an election, as well as the fact that the villain will be The Tinkerer. We also got to see gameplay footage which shows Miles controlling similarly to Peter Parker in the previous game, but with a heavy emphasis on his ability to generate electricity in his hands. Deathloop looks like a fun, fast paced First Person Shooter with a teleportation mechanic as well as being able to levitate enemies. Paired with the story element of being caught in a time loop with another assassin constantly pursuing you, it’s shaping up to be an exciting new title. We also got further looks at Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Fortnite, the Demon’s Souls remake, Oddworld: Soulstorm, and Resident Evil: Village.
In terms of new games, we got the announcement of Final Fantasy XVI. Where Final Fantasy XV asked the question “What if Final Fantasy, but car?”, Final Fantasy XVI seems to ask “What if Final Fantasy, but vengeful older brother?” A more surprising announcement was Hogwarts Legacy, a game set in the Harry Potter universe in the late 1800s. It’s hard to tell what exactly this game is. The voiceover implies that you will be able to explore both Hogwarts and the wider Wizarding World and seems to suggest RPG elements, though that is just speculation. Given the amount of backlash that JK Rowling (and by extension Harry Potter as a franchise) is receiving for her recent transphobic comments, this announcement could not have come at a worse time. We also got a look at a new installment in the Five Nights at Freddy’s series, Five Nights at Freddy’s: Security Breach. Devil May Cry 5: Special Edition was another unexpected announcement. The presentation ended with the title drop for God of War: Ragnarok, a sequel to the 2018 reboot.
Of all the games listed above, the following will be available on launch: Fortnite, Demon’s Souls, Devil May Cry 5: Special Edition, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, and Spider-Man: Miles Morales. My problem is this: of that line-up you have one pre-existing game, two remakes, and two new games both of which will also be available on the PlayStation 4. There are no genuine PlayStation 5 exclusives. Beyond that, none of these games feel like they even need to be on the PlayStation 5. Though the graphics may be marginally improved, all these games clearly run very well on previous consoles. Sony has given us no incentive to buy a PlayStation 5 on launch. It feels like they spent so long making a console they forgot that they needed to make games for it.
It may be unfair to expect Sony to have their console defining game available on day one, most launch lineups don’t. One the Nintendo Switch’s flagship games, Breath of the Wild, was, like Spider-Man and Call of Duty, a launch title that also was released on the previous generation, in this case the WiiU. That garnered less disappointment, in my mind, because of how poorly the WiiU sold. For context, the PlayStation 4 has sold over 110 million units, whereas the WiiU only sold about 13 million. For most people, buying a Switch was the next step after buying a Wii, while the PlayStation 4 is currently the fourth best selling console of all time, so we can presume that most people shopping for the PlayStation 5 probably already have access to its library. I’m not looking for Sony to have something akin to Breath of the Wild in terms of scope and innovation, but having all of your launch titles still available on the last generation makes it feel as if we’re going to have to wait a while for the PlayStation 5 to really take off in any substantial way. This launch line-up isn’t going to tank the console by any means, I just wish that they had something exclusive that could move consoles during the early days or, at the very least, justify spending between €399 and €499 on new hardware.
Sony has been at the forefront of Triple A gaming for around two decades now. So I do still believe that the Playstation 5 could be “The Future of Gaming” as they claimed in June. It just may take them a little bit longer to get there than they thought.
