Round Up: What Was Announced at the PlayStation Showcase?

Live service games, indies, live service games, cool-looking third-parties (MGS3, Alan Wake, AC, DD), live service games, Spider-Man 2 and I failed to mention live service games.

I didn't even watch the showcase since I knew it will show rated M games that I really hate them, but I saw The Plucky Squire from the list and that was the only upcoming kids game I have interest about.
I only play kids games.

We going to talk about Foamstars?

The blatant pathetic ripoff of Splatoon. I'd be embarrassed to write about it too.

I give it a year before servers are shut down.

@Anke
Cat Quest ?
This game, right?

I couldn’t believe how bland and unoriginal the live service games they showed off looked. You could take the PlayStation studios tag off most of them and I’d think they were from Ubisoft or EA. I was fully expecting Sony to bring the same level of polish and quality of their single player games to them, but so far it just looks like chasing trends. Factions and the Horizon multiplayer game should be the level of quality we have come to expect from PlayStation, but all of these outside of Marathon will probably be shut down in a year.

@Jslade What PlayStation studios live service was shown, I only remember the Fairgames cinematic shown at the very start?

Oh Jim Ryan, go home. You’re drunk..

@eltomo

6 months at most.

No one abandons a project faster than Square-Enix.

@Anke Just written the article for Cat Quest, love the first two games!

@Intr1n5ic The PS Studios live service games shown were:

• Fairgames
• Helldivers 2
• Marathon
• Final Shape expansion for Destiny 2
• Concord

The only PS Studios game present that wasn't live service is Spider-Man 2.

Game of the show: Dragon's Dogma II
Runner up: Alan Wake II.
Nice surprise award: Marathon. Single player FPS from Bungie? Sign me up.
Looks unbelievable (but not my thing) award: Spiderman 2
Outstanding mention: Phantom Blade 0.
Goddamn impressive but stop it with the trailers award: FFXVI.
Dissapointment of the day would be Factions 2 awol, and the Haven live service game teaser.
Just terrible award goes to Foamstars, a cringey ripoff of splatoon.

I give the showcase an overall score of 07/10. And only because of the DD2 reveal

@AdamNovice Exactly this, Sony tried something different and still got hate for it. Yet the competition pumps out indies and live service games left right and centre and they get praised for it whilst Sony are a "one trick pony".

Its like Sony can't do anything right without attracting hate from the masses, if sony showed all their first party titles tonight you'd have those still slating them for releasing live service and third person games. Ghost of tsushima 2 would apparently be the same game with a different skin, the same old trope people are saying about spiderman 2 right now on social media and other sites, same was said about Horizon Forbidden West and God of War Ragnarok.

Its just all too pathetic.

Foamstars is an absolute hilarious disgrace.

Plus they missed a massive trick by not calling it Soap Stars. SE could have then sold DLC packs like Nick and Dot Cotton. Ken and Deidre Barlow skins. New battle arenas such as The Woolpack The Rover's Return. The game practically writes itself!

(Apologies for any non-British people reading the above as it will make no sense whatsoever.) 🙂

That's a whole lot of meh, not much that really grabs my attention.

Complete and utter disappointment! Spider man 2 looks cool but rest of showcase was trash. Where's TLOU2 factions, next Uncharted, next Horizon, etc. Doesn't fill me with much confidence for the future of playstation studios on PS5. Was also considering getting PSVR2 but there is literally one exclusive (Horizon) that I'm interested in. So forget that.

Not a bad list. This showcase was exactly what I was expecting it to be. So I'm not disappointed but also not at all blown away.

@Grumblevolcano Thank you. I didn't realise Helldivers was made by a Sony studio, or that it was live service, I probably should of been paying more attention. Was the first one live service?

Hard to call any of the rest of that list bland and unoriginal though considering we didn't see anything of them.

@__jamiie Practically everything that becomes a big hit gets ripped off these days so it's no real surprise. And unfortunately they rarely ever live up to the original either so the signs don't look good for Foamstars. Your Soap Stars suggestion is genius though!

The biggest problem I had with the show is that we really don't know a whole lot more than we did going in about what the 1st party devs are up to. The only new thing we really saw anything from was Helldivers 2 and Spider-Man. The rest were just CG trailers that gave basically nothing. Like what even is Concord? That trailer literally gave absolutely no indication of what it is supposed to be.

Just expected a bit more from 1st party is all.

@arsmolinarc: Nice surprise award: Marathon. Single player FPS from Bungie? Sign me up.

Ummm...you know that's multiplayer only, without even an SP campaign, right? From the official PS blog:

Marathon is designed from the start as a PvP-focused game and won’t have a single-player campaign.

IIIIIIIIM STIIIIIILLL IN A DREAAAAAAM SNAKE EATEEEEEEER!!!

@eltomo A year? That's generous. I give it 3 months, 6 months tops.

@UltimateOtaku91 As someone who has regularly followers every gaming scene I can possibly find. No one genuine actually wants more live service games. Nintendo has been trying to release their games live service style by releasing stuff half baked and then finishing it later, usually not even bothering to fully patch it up even. This is a common complaint among fans. And those on mobile have been getting increasingly annoyed with the formula because games that are online only which usually have IAPs end up getting shuttered after only two years. And I've watched almost every Xbox showcase since 2015, if you read the live chat comments on one of those videos, the amount of moaning about Microsoft's newest shooty game, whichever generic one they show, is enormous.
Large companies get a large amount of flak no matter what they do, but sometimes it's justified, and I think trend chasing something that was ethically questionable to begin with is deserving of some flak.
Additionally, check comments on Nintendo and Xbox gaming sites, particularly Nintendolife and Pure Xbox, you'll find people similar to yourself making the same argument about how nobody gives their competitors flak for this or that. It's simply incorrect no matter who says it, so if you're not seeing the criticisms of competitor's products, you're probably looking in the wrong place.

@AdamNovice @UltimateOtaku91 To be clear, when people say they want Sony to pump money into projects that aren't cinematic third-person action-adventure titles, they also want the games to not look generic and boring.

There was no need to call this a showcase.

They should have just made this a 1-hour State of Play based on indies, third-parties, and VR titles.

Then they could have done a separate 15-20 minute State of Play for Spider-Man 2 and it would have been pretty much the same thing.

When you call your event a PlayStation Showcase, you’re setting expectations for first-party studios to show up in a big way.

What a bummer.

20 minutes of gold, 40 of meh!.

That Phantom Blade 0 was the standout for me, combat looked fantastic, was weird, stylish.. just brilliant. Hope it can live up to the trailer.

@Anti-Matter Plucky Squire always looked good to us. Also coming to Switch BTW. 👍

@eltomo We were showing my wife the Foamstars trailer as I was reading your comment. She's not a gamer but even she knows Splatoon when she sees it. 😂

Watching Tower of Agabasha now - not to be confused w/ Genshin Impact looking Tower of Fantasy - b/c it looks like the XCX world. Could be good.🤷

I thought it was a good show, all games no filler, and I liked that they stuck all the VR games in 1 spot for me to ignore, but I have low expectations. I was thinking about selling my PS5 while I was playing it but my kid is taking my Switch to college so I need it for Fortnite.😁

@arsmolinarc Sorry to break it to you. Marathon is PvP with no single player. Was dissapointed when I heard. Rubbush.

@eltomo I literally posted the same sentiment on another article. lol. Server shut down within a year after release for sure. I have no faith in Foamstars.

Aren't there some games missing? Like Immortals of Aveum?

I had 'low' expectations for this show but even I was not impressed by this. I know games are taking 'longer' and 'longer' to develop but I had expected more than just Spider-Man 2 from Sony - at least 'Factions' that was 'expected' this year too.

I am not interested in Japanese games - like Final Fantasy or those 'live' service/co-op games either. Some of the Indies look OK, nothing particular stood out to me though. Most of the AAA games look 'great', but also like it could have been a generic Show from a decade or more ago. Nothing felt 'fresh' to me - certainly nothing I intend to play at/near launch, pay $70+ to be amongst the 'first' to play....

It was a good show but there were too manuly live services for my taste and I hoped to see a new gameplay trailer with a release date for Silent Hill 2 Remake which did not happen. I also hoped to see some preliminary in game or teaser trailer for Max Payne Remake which also did n9t happen

If I ignore the almost complete lack of any 1st party games I actually enjoyed it. Nice mix of games, big and small. Personally I counted 11 games im going to buy including 3 of the psvr2 games.
I do think Sony need to have something in September with more 1st party news though.

I enjoyed the show even though I'm not interested in most games shown. Dragons dogma 2 finally showing gameplay was enough to make me happy but some others like spiderman 2 gameplay and kravens reveal, mgs making a comeback and cat quest all made me excited. I think it's one of the best ps showcases I've ever seen although I admit I expected more because it's been so long to see something new from sony.

Out of everything they showed ........... I was kinda disappointed
Only games I am considering is
Spiderman 2
Alan Wake 2
Metal Gear Solid 3 remake
That's it 🫤🫤🫤
I will wait on the Beta on Bungie's new game BUT with there copy and paste philosophy with Destiny ....... That will probably be a miss

Immortals of Aveum looked dope AF, hope the game holds up.

Whole thing felt very flat, so decided to run some numbers...

• 34 games shown in total (5 PSVR games)
• 5 Playstation Studio games (if you include Bungie). Only 1 showed gameplay.
• 6 games had release dates. 9 additional games have a release window of 2023. Everything else undated or next year.
• Surprisingly 70% of games shown had gameplay trailers.

My personal stats

• Out of everything, only one game is a definite play for me (Spiderman)
• There are 4 other games I am interested in (Sword of the Sea, The Plucky Squire, Teardown, Ultros)

Some of the game highlights for me:

• MGS Delta: Snake Eater + MGS collection Vol.1
• Granblue Fantasy Relink getting a Winter 2023 release date (pls do not delay anymore)
• Spider-Man 2. Wasn't really that much hyped for this but seeing that gameplay made me excited even more now.
• Phantom Blade 0 with that sick combat mechanic
• Tower of Fantasy finally releasing on PS5 (I just want to play another F2P game other than Genshin Impact lmao)

Overall, it was an OK showcase but definitely lacking and not really worth the hype.

When Final Fantasy fails to meet sales expectations who do y'all think will purchase Square Enix?

@KaijuKaiser exactly. Not only was Forbidden West released last year, this year we got DLC and the PSVR2 game. Yet some people expect a Horizon announcement? Make it make sense.