Whereas Sony’s shuttering of Concrete Genie developer PixelOpus earlier in May wasn’t making headlines the way in which yesterday’s PlayStation Showcase announcement of the Metal Gear Solid 3 remake did, it nonetheless hangs over the PlayStation model like a darkish cloud, even when Sony’s displaying an hour’s price of upcoming video games.
The PixelOpus closure was the most recent in an extended line of strikes by the model to place itself as an organization of status, blockbuster video video games. It’s gotten to the purpose the place Sony’s reportedly derailing its studios to work on Uncharted games instead of new IP. Gone, it appears, is the Sony that championed quirky and distinctive titles like Media Molecule’s Tearaway or Japan Studio’s Gravity Rush.
That is the trajectory PlayStation has been on for the reason that PS4 period. The loss of life of PixelOpus appears like one other omen {that a} model that when prided itself on encouraging artistic bets is more and more solely fascinated by chasing big-budget blockbusters. This PlayStation Showcase felt like a reminder that, whereas there are nonetheless loads of pretty, modern video games coming to the PS5, most of them are coming from studios that appear extra influenced by the PlayStation model’s modern previous than its seemingly prestige-obsessed current and future.
Sony’s doubling down on status blockbusters
Sony’s large headlining recreation was Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, which appears nice, however leans onerous into the cinematic motion storytelling that popularized Naughty Canine’s Uncharted. The complete recreation will probably be stuffed with the fast-paced, superhero theatrics, however the gameplay we did see made a degree to highlight the course and setpieces which have turn into synonymous with the PlayStation model. I get pleasure from these elements of Sony’s video games, however I additionally acknowledge how these ideas have turn into a degree of friction for a lot of followers since The Final of Us first exploded in 2013. At first, the sentiment that each one of Sony’s first-party video games felt like they have been chasing Naughty Canine’s highs felt overblown to me. However these days, I’m beginning to surprise.
Sure, there’s definitely one thing to be mentioned about how some video games—Horizon, the Norse God of Conflict duology, even some ill-fated franchise attempts like Days Gone—clearly take inspiration from Naughty Canine’s post-apocalyptic collection. However claiming they’re all the identical once they couldn’t be farther aside conceptually and systemically has at all times felt like a reductive view of what’s really taking place at Sony. That nuance is commonly misplaced as a result of, to some, the concept of “cutscenes as a storytelling system” has one way or the other been claimed by The Final of Us, which dovetails with some individuals’s mistaken notion that, “any recreation that includes a human-like character in a third-person perspective is similar, really.”
However as Sony shifts additional towards an emphasis on photorealistic visuals and HBO adaptation-ready storytelling, it’s leaving extra concepts on the cutting-room flooring. And extra expertise is being pushed out. Watching a PlayStation Showcase the place the first-party line-up consisted of solely big-budget, prestige-driven efforts or live-service video games makes artistic excessive factors like Puppeteer, LittleBigPlanet, Tokyo Jungle, and even the early Sly Cooper video games really feel like relics of a bygone period.
No matter throughline an individual claims makes Sony’s first-party output really feel homogenous, it’s regarding that Sony now appears much less fascinated by completely different visible artwork types, gameplay mechanics, and storytelling approaches because it makes an attempt to spin all the pieces below the PlayStation umbrella right into a multimedia universe. Ratchet and Clank is among the solely old-school survivors of what appears to be a culling of the video games and creatives behind PlayStation’s beforehand eclectic first-party catalog.
Sony’s upcoming slate has no scarcity of sequels to its trendy status video games, and Spider-Man 2 and Sony-published Dying Stranding 2 will in all probability be nice. But it surely feels their existence now comes on the expense of smaller-scale, modern tasks like Concrete Genie and Parappa the Rapper. Outdoors of Spider-Man 2, a lot of Sony’s first-party PlayStation Showcase tasks confirmed simply cinematic trailers with out gameplay, and a good few additionally appeared to be geared towards multiplayer, comparable to Haven’s FairGame$ and Marathon. Reside-service and status video games appear to be the 2 pillars of PlayStation Studios proper now.
We’re nonetheless getting loads of that previous artistic spirit in indie video games
In the meantime, a lot of the corporate’s previous spirit was captured by indie studios who Sony did, on the very least, highlight on its large digital stage. Video games like Neva, Cat Quest, and Revenant Hill stand out alongside generic video games with generic names. Three years and counting of ambient pandemic noise and countless “digital showcases” have solely made the rising homogeneity of many big-budget video games extra obvious, and prompted this samey output to more and more mix collectively in our minds. Now, Sony’s personal video games are falling into that lure themselves.
Sony needs PlayStation to develop right into a megalithic model with a hand in each type of leisure. It apparently feels that doesn’t go away it time to double again to its extra lighthearted historical past, or dedicate assets to nice larks it will possibly’t spin off into wildly successful HBO series or live-action movies. And whereas the PlayStation Showcase solely had a couple of first-party video games to point out, I can’t assist however really feel the corporate is wholly missing in the identical creativeness it as soon as had. The PlayStation 3 period, which is broadly thought-about to be the technology Sony “misplaced” the made-up console battle in opposition to Microsoft’s Xbox 360, was one in every of its most experimental phases. Thrilling new video games have been popping off always, and it simply felt like the corporate was extra prepared to attempt new issues and make errors. Now, Sony’s output at all times feels too fastidiously curated and on-message to evince a lot starry-eyed surprise.
This isn’t a Sony-specific downside, as just about each large model in leisure has turn into more and more extra scared of perceived failures, to the purpose the place any deviation from the general public mission assertion have to be sanded down or stomped out. Sony says it hopes to have half of its output be new IP by 2025, and I simply hope that no matter video games the corporate reveals us within the coming years will have the ability to recapture a few of the previous magic. However provided that Sony apparently additionally needs live-service video games to be a large chunk of its supposed coming renaissance, I’m not holding my breath.
