Whereas Sony’s shuttering of Concrete Genie developer PixelOpus earlier in Might wasn’t making headlines the best way yesterday’s PlayStation Showcase announcement of the Steel Gear Strong 3 remake did, it nonetheless hangs over the PlayStation model like a darkish cloud, even when Sony’s displaying an hour’s value 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 video games as a substitute of recent 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 demise of PixelOpus looks like one other omen {that a} model that after prided itself on encouraging artistic bets is more and more solely all for chasing big-budget blockbusters. This PlayStation Showcase felt like a reminder that, whereas there are nonetheless loads of pretty, revolutionary video games coming to the PS5, most of them are coming from studios that appear extra influenced by the PlayStation model’s revolutionary previous than its seemingly prestige-obsessed current and future.
Sony’s doubling down on status blockbusters
Sony’s massive headlining recreation was Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, which appears nice, however leans exhausting into the cinematic motion storytelling that popularized Naughty Canine’s Uncharted. The total recreation might be filled with the fast-paced, superhero theatrics, however the gameplay we did see made some extent to highlight the course and setpieces which have develop into synonymous with the PlayStation model. I get pleasure from these points of Sony’s video games, however I additionally acknowledge how these ideas have develop into some extent 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 currently, I’m beginning to surprise.
Sure, there’s actually one thing to be stated about how some video games—Horizon, the Norse God of Battle duology, even some ill-fated franchise makes an attempt like Days Gone—clearly take inspiration from Naughty Canine’s post-apocalyptic sequence. However claiming they’re all the identical after they couldn’t be farther aside conceptually and systemically has all the time felt like a reductive view of what’s really occurring at Sony. That nuance is commonly misplaced as a result of, to some, the concept of “cutscenes as a storytelling gadget” has by some means been claimed by The Final of Us, which dovetails with some individuals’s mistaken notion that, “any recreation that entails 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 ground. 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 all for totally different visible artwork types, gameplay mechanics, and storytelling approaches because it makes an attempt to spin every part underneath the PlayStation umbrella right into a multimedia universe. Ratchet and Clank is without doubt one of 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 fashionable status video games, and Spider-Man 2 and Sony-published Demise Stranding 2 will most likely be nice. But it surely feels their existence now comes on the expense of smaller-scale, revolutionary initiatives like Concrete Genie and Parappa the Rapper. Exterior of Spider-Man 2, lots of Sony’s first-party PlayStation Showcase initiatives confirmed simply cinematic trailers with out gameplay, and a good few additionally appeared to be geared towards multiplayer, akin 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 outdated artistic spirit in indie video games
In the meantime, a lot of the corporate’s outdated 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 triggered 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 desires 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 sources to nice larks it might probably’t spin off into wildly profitable HBO sequence or live-action films. And whereas the PlayStation Showcase solely had just a few 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 extensively thought of to be the technology Sony “misplaced” the made-up console struggle in opposition to Microsoft’s Xbox 360, was considered one of its most experimental phases. Thrilling new video games have been popping off continually, and it simply felt like the corporate was extra prepared to attempt new issues and make errors. Now, Sony’s output all the time feels too fastidiously curated and on-message to evince a lot starry-eyed surprise.
This isn’t a Sony-specific drawback, as just about each massive model in leisure has develop into more and more extra frightened 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 be capable to recapture a number of the outdated magic. However provided that Sony apparently additionally desires live-service video games to be a large chunk of its supposed coming renaissance, I’m not holding my breath.
