Sony failed to stick the landing(also it was kind of a mess)

Heys guys!

As like many of you, I watched the sony ps5 briefing, yesterday, and man, they really messed that up. Here are some reasons why:

1. "Actually we dont believe in generations"

With the news that horizon zero dawn 2 and spiderman miles Morales are both coming the ps4, sony completed undid their own messaging. I can't even believe that they ran with that messaging in the first place since they knew that it wasn't the case. They just wanted to differentiate themselves from microsoft. Well, now they are the same so...

2. "*Also coming to pc"

The original trailers showed final fantasy and demons souls "also coming to pc". Then sony scrubbed the trailers and said they weren't lol. These games are totally coming to pc. There is no way they aren't and I can believe sony is fumbling this so hard

3. Demons souls is $70 dollars

All first party sony games look like they will now be 70 dollars(that's gonna be around 90 dollars up north where I am)

70 dollars for a remake, when you can get gamepass for 15 dollars a month and play all of xbox first party... just saying one might be a better value proposition than the other...

4. There were dmc 5 remaster and a spiderman remaster announcements... just saying there is no smart delivery or free upgrades here

5. The complete mess of pre order information.

Geoff Keighley was the one to break the news that preorders were available tomorrow September 17, which is already a very short period of time, but then some retailers started early yesterday september 16th. I really think they wanted to create this mess to increase the "FOMO" and is probably will work. It's just a mess.

What do you guys think? Haha

Anectodal as it may be, it seems to me everyone and their mother is getting or at least trying to get a ps5. Straight up seconds after the price was shown on the stream I see people on my timeline decrying how much they want it now. I think the core of it all is at the end of the day, the points you make matter to really informed people and budgeters, but what people care about is the games. Which look either amazing, show promise, and drum up excitement.

Also that 1st point about generations is weird because of how development works of course there will be cross gen games. If you can fit something on a ps4 then do it, doesn't discount that the better version exists as well as will probably run much better.

I agree with you that it was quite messy and unacceptable that information on twitter had to spread around to get the entire picture, but at the same time i feel like the games and the price are the main pieces of information people have taken away from the stream. If those are acceptable, consoles will be bought. Unless you're one of those customers that would've bought a playstation specifically to play Demons Souls but is patient enough and has a decent PC to wait for the PC version.

I mean the end result is that I still really want a PS5.

So customer friendly moves at a time when people are hurting for money is a bad thing now? If the PS5 became less enticing now because your current hardware is more viable, that’s a you problem, not Sony’s. Be happy that you don’t have to spend the money!

And regarding the price increase, just wait for a price drop. It’s not rocket science.

I completely agree with you. I'm less excited for Horizon 2 knowing that it's also being developed with old consoles in mind but I will say that they did the most important thing by having at least one competitive price on the digital edition. $400 is not bad at all and keeps them comfortably in the race against Xbox. The argument still comes down to whether you want to be Sony's ecosystem and play their games or go with the consumer friendly Netflix-like game service from MS.

I mean it was a hype show so if some of the finer details about PC ports and whatnot weren't in there, I don't mind. I think it's been a messy year for, well, everything and I think they did incredibly well despite all of that.

When it comes to preorders, I firmly believe that what happened last night was not supposed to happen. Keighley dropped that preorder info in some random twitter thread and suddenly everyone was in a panic about preorders. I imagine this caused retailers to start posting things as soon as they could as to not miss out on others dropping. Someone pressed go early which caused everyone to press go earlier than planned. The console, games, and accessories were all dropping at random times until quite late last night.

I know many people on Sony's invite list also received emails last night with messaging around preorders hitting on Friday and them having unique URLs too. I imagine this is what was supposed to happen.

From what I've seen around the internet this morning, it looks like things are stabilizing and people are getting their preorders in. I know Sony also tweeted about preorders opening-up, but at the end of the day, it's up to the retailers who have the stock, they can only firmly control their internal stock. I know games have been released early this way too if retailers had them in store.

I'm still super excited for the nextgen overall. Neither rollout has been completely without fault (remember that terrible Microsoft press conference at the beginning of the summer? Also, I heard they delayed Halo?). Everyone gets so worked up about all of this but all of these things are run by humans, and humans are not perfect. I've had to launch sales for programming my organization does and it never goes as smoothly as you want no matter how big or small your organization is. I can't imagine the coordination of dozens of retailers.

TLDR: Nextgen still looks rad! Excited for a 4k 60FPS box to play Destiny 2 on my fancy new 4k TV with HDMI 2.1.

All true. Also the first time it feelt just a bit like E3.

I dunno, Sony has games that I can only play on a PS5, Xbox is like, hey, good chance you already have something that'll play all this. Makes the decision much easier for me!

The fumbled super hard. PlayStation is pretty much Sony have at this point. They are absolutely Sally, The Football, and Charlie Browning us right now. They’ll get their money. Nintendo used to get my money. Sony will never get my money again.

I need to rewatch the presentation because I watched Giant Bombs talk over but Xbox and PlayStation conferences present things that I feel can be done on current gen.

I think Ben absolutely got it wrong on what the legacy of this generation of consoles is. This gen is fortnite, broadcasting yourself, skins and ps plus games that blow up. That’s it. Nothing innovative gameplay wise or system level wise has materialized. That COD segment could have just as easily been for the debut of PS4. Miles Morales QuickTime-a-thon is very much at home with some later 360 games. The wide vistas of Harry Potter are straight out of a World Of Warcraft game. That PSPlus Collections present the best of what this gen had to offer and all those limitations remain intact for this generation absent the squeeze between 2 rocks to load in the new area.

We needed to see (especially if you’re offering preorders)

1. Controller Cost

2. PS Plus Library available day one?

3. Which discs will work so I can go digital if none do

4. Game boot up to start

5. Timely information like will Fall Guys work day 1

6. Why anybody should extend their psPlus membership. If I elect to trade in my Xbox for a discount on a Series-S I could still see myself combing through the sales and picking up games for the Xbox one and redeeming my games with gold titles or even extending my subscription if they have some offers. Let me pick up 2 more years of psplus.. yeah right

7. If they believe in generations so much they should not be putting horizon or Spider-Man on PS4. When they did that I knew that whatever promise next gen actually holds will not materialize as they scrape as much money out of the PS4 base

8. Where is PSNow? Clearly there is no need for PS Plus Collection and now overlap. Is PSNow done?

9. PS VR is available 2021?

This is a mess.

Nintendo with their mini direct. However will they manage with the power of 2 duct taped Wii's? This power promise is empty.

They really messed up with the pre-order nonsense. I dont' think I've ever seen anything like it, it's the closest I've seen to the saturn launch.

fun fact though, I was able to walk in on launch day and get a ps4

@oursin_360: That's unusual I think, PS4s were crazy hard to find.

1, 70$

2. They showed off a a huge library called the collection right there

3. 99% of them do

4. It looks like a game starting?

5. It's all backwards compat

6. Because you have to play online

7. Development on them being on ps4 was done a long time ago. Scrapping that would be ridiculous. But also they'll obviously run better on the new hardware.

8. Lol psnow

9. PSVR is probably an entirely separate presentation. Right now is just about games instead of VR which is just a niche at this point.

Yea, I did a double take at work last night around 5:30PM when a dude who is literally one of my best friends but hasn't touched a video game console since...the NES...???....randomly blurted out, "Yo man you get that PS5 pre-order in yet?" The next time I talk to him about a game I'm playing would be the first time (and again, I've spent about 5-8 work hours and 2-4 after hours hours with him almost every day for nearly 3 years now) and yet there we are, standing in a kitchen waiting for the finishing touches on some oven-roasted rabbit leg and he's asking me, "Yo man you get that PS5 pre-order in yet?" as I'm purposely avoiding my phone so this stream could wash over me fresh this morning.

Which I guess is a long-winded way of saying, also anecdotally, people are talking about that PS5.

As for this specific launch stream, I guess I'll feel a little out of the loop until I pull Polygon/Kotaku/Gamespot up over the next hour because purely from watching the Giant Bomb guys react to the stream and from the information given in the stream, that looked like a pretty perfect pseudo-press conference to me.

You can get free upgrade of ps5 version of miles and horizon 2 w the ps4 verison. It’s also a way to get those games for $10 cheaper

@colourful_hippie: I was disappointed about horizon 2 being x-gen as well but it’ll be cool to see their differences, especially the loading

@liquiddragon: What meaningful difference are we getting. My favorite experience this generation is playing through an updated difference and swearing there's a difference.

Demon's Souls on PC saved me 400 so thanks Sony.

They've been doing lots of dumb stuff but to my mind Sony is bullet proof right now. If you look out on say twitter its full on Sony fanboy forum shit that I grew up seeing as a kid from adult normies. That's where that is now.

I personally think its just the solidification of years of Playstation nostalgia more than anything else, the generation of people who grew up on PS1 and 2 like me growing up and it being synonymous with gaming for them. Plus I think that Xbox One reveal fiasco did permanent damage to their brand.

@fourthline: I’m sure there will be visual and performance differences and like I said, loading speed

@toughshed: I think it's also that like.. to me Xbox is entirely devoted to fundamentals right now and Sony still tries to swing big for hype.

Like Xbox is a solid platform and provides tremendous service with game pass but I don't feel like there is or has been anything prompting me to think "Holy shit I gotta have an Xbox for that!" in years.

I got to at least three checkouts, sadly with no success. Hats off to those who got one (that aren't resellers).

I was living in west texas back then, maybe because it was such a small city. But I didn't even pre-order lol, there were like 3 people in front of me and we all got one easy.

@oursin_360: Wild, I remember having the goddamn store alert aggregate sites open playing obnoxious noises every time any potential stock came up and it still took ages.

Load times at very least will be noticeable, by a long shot.

My main concern about this cross gen bullshit is that I wanted to see Horizon 2 built some systems centered around the SSD like what we're seeing with the new Ratchet game but that sure as shit won't happen if this is coming to PS4

Bad news fam

@fugoy: Oh they can put up hasty disclaimers all they want that game is totally coming to PC.

@efesell: This. I think Microsoft is gonna win big this generation precisely because they're focusing on accessibility over hardware. I think they realize that there are only so many boxes that they can actual put out before people are sick of new hardware. The muted responses for both consoles shows that.

What I'd like to know:

I have PS4 games bought digitally. Will I be able to play them on the PS5 day one?

@sombre: yes, most of them. 99% of them. We don’t know what 1% aren’t bc.

@sombre: Sony claims 99% of PS4 games will run on PS5. So the answer is mostly yes.

@kemuri07: the response to the new consoles haven’t been muted in the last couple weeks

I'm surprised there aren't many people catching their cross-gen double standard. It is absolutely better for consumers that they now suddenly care about PS4 owners still, instead of hanging them out to dry, but it points to a generation of Sony not quite knowing what they're doing or why they're doing it. Microsoft's messaging is very clear: play these games where you want and how you want, as long as you're on Game Pass. Sony is like: we believe in generational leaps and you'll play these games only on the newest hardware, except the ones where you don't, and except these digital PS4-only games, and except on the PC. I was honestly hoping that Sony really was going whole-hog on next-gen development, but it looks like they support for PS4 owners is the same as Microsft's support for Xbox One owners, the difference being that Microsoft messaged and planned far in advance for it and Sony just kinda lied?

I dunno, seemed like a fine presentation to me. The pre-order mess sucks but the games looked good and the system seems worthwhile.

But have they confirmed your digital store stuff will carry over? Will I need to buy another license? Will my saves carry over?

There's a lot of questions

I feel like I'm missing some information. Why are people angry about some games being cross platform? Worked out fine for GTA5?

@sombre: It hasn’t been confirmed but Sony was really good about honoring cross gen purchases going from PS3 to PS4. Like, I got a PS4 copy of Journey and Flower for free for owning the PS3 version. I have to imagine it’ll be the same this time around.

@anderswarming: The reason we didnt get a GTA6 is because of the lazyness of porting over GTA5. GTA5 is going to straddle 3 generations. An 11 year old that beat GTAV could only have played GTAV this whole time can now vote.

@fourthline: Well I think it's probably more because they turned on a giant faucet labeled GTA Online and drowned in cash.

If it doesn't, I probably wont buy it

@navster15: @sombre: being able to play your old games is a key part of bc. If you had to buy them all again, I mean...I guess that’s technically bc but that’d be silly. Don’t worry, your digital purchases will transfer. They haven’t talked about how the bc works so not sure if saves will be transferable. That’s a good question.

I would also point out that the creative mind(for good and bad) behind GTA was working on Red Dead and then left the company to retire as a rich person. Rockstar is likely revisiting GTA and deciding exactly what they want the next one to be. Frankly, I don't know how you make a GTA post 2020 while keep the tone of GTA past games. It is like Southpark doing an episode on the pandemic(I know they are doing it for real). Sure, jokes can be found, but 200K people are dead and its likely to be a lot more in the next year.

To be clear, comedy is totally possible and healthy during a crisis. There were comedians during the Vietnam War who were beloved. But minds behind nihilistic humor of GTA and Southpark are not going to be those comedians.

Edit: In regards to the topic, I was pretty happy with the PS5 stuff. I have a PC that I play many games on, so I don't really need an Xbox(did have one this generation). I was just happy for the news that Demon Souls is a launch game, Spiderman is this year and the price is within what I can afford during the pandemic. The offering of free games with PS Plus/network is fine. I don't own all those games and it will be nice to play the ones I don't own.

The most important part is Monster Hunter World is part of the package, so in theory I should be able to move my +500 hour character to a system that doesn't have terrible load times. In theory. But that alone will be worth the price. (Yes, another 500 hours on PC is possible. I have the game. But currently it is not happening)

@anderswarming: People aren't angry about games being cross platform. In some cases people might be a bit disappointed because it means those games will have to compromise in order to run on older hardware. However the biggest thing people are pointing out is that it goes directly against Playstation's messaging up until this point. They are the one's who said they believe in generations and suggested that first party games would not be cross platform.

Just cements my decision to wait a few months. (which I was going to do anyway to save for it without breaking the bank, but still) I've gone from telling myself "I don't need a PS5 yet, I don't need a PS5 yet..." to "Okay, but seriously, I really don't need a PS5 yet". I'm realizing that the main draw for me as of right now is the load times, and that's not a $500 benefit to me just yet.

I think we need to frame this in a more long-term strategy.

Xbox commits to making games that you can play on PC, and the recent xbox consoles you have from here on out. Or through Xcloud.

PS5 might share some games with the PS4 in this early transition period, as is always the case, but you shouldn't expect the next God of War game that gets released in 2021 or 2022 to also be available to Ps4 users. In that regard they stick to the generational way of thinking while Xbox blows that entire framework wide open and makes their games play across generational boundaries.

Sony can try to control the news how they want but the developers but it on screen for a reason.

@liquiddragon: I’d imagine your cloud saves transfer if you have PS Plus. They already had the infrastructure in place to share saved across PS3, PS4, and Vita so I’d imagine they have the capacity to do it here. For non-PS Plus members, there’s always physical transferring of saves via usb drive.