The Pathetic State of Modern PlayStation

welcome to PlayStation 5 at PlayStation we believe in generational transitions and put years of work into making them a reality we want you to enjoy the unique benefits of moving from one generation to the next I literally have one I have one there are no games there are no games in it it's a box from Netflix there is nothing if you have been on the gaming social media landscape for the last month, you may have noticed a very alarming pattern in many AAA game studios lately, that pattern is that they are struggling a lot, since the layoff from employees to game releases that don't meet sales expectations and even said game releases that just aren't really good video games, basically, aside from a couple of exceptions like Nintendo and almost every Master AAA epic game.

Every developer and publisher you can imagine is going through real financial problems right now and one of these mive publishers is possibly the most infamous among the rest. A game publisher is none other than Sony Interactive Entertainment, also known as PlayStation. There has been a lot of news revealed recently. about the foreseeable future of PlayStation which shows that they are currently going through a difficult time, from the aforementioned layoffs to the announcement that there will be no major game releases for the rest of this year and even the announcement of the PlayStation 5 console that is now enters the last year. stage of its life after failing to meet sales expectations, there is simply no sugar coating to it, the PlayStation brand is currently going on a downward spiral, naturally, with all these shocking announcements coming from the company itself, this has caused much confusion and justified raising of eyebrows.

Among gaming fans in general, how come PlayStation, a brand that felt like it was on top of the world at the end of the last generation just a few years ago, is now suddenly in a position where Did they have to lay off 900 of their employees? Well, unfortunately, the answer to that question isn't exactly simple, while it would be very easy for me to basically summarize this entire video, haha, the PS5 doesn't have games and that's why no one buys it. Thank you for watching my video. Subscribe to get more information. The simple truth is that there is a lot more to the situation than I mean the Wii U definitely had games for its time and yet you saw what happened with that thing, instead what I think is happening is a combination of small problems that have been plaguing PlayStation for years, small problems that have been getting worse and worse and now they are simultaneously coming back to affect Sony and that's what I want to talk about today, let's take a look at the problems that are currently ruining PlayStation and let's explain how.

I feel like PlayStation has been taking us and their fans for granted lately. I guess I should structure this video by going over these topics one by one. I'll even add Inception noise between the transitions to make it fun. one of the reasons why everything you do for PlayStation is so expensive now Sony, you know, for a long time I always thought Nintendo was the worst of the big three gaming companies when it came to giving their products the most outrageous prices and ridiculously high as you can imagine: $100 for an extra Switch stock like yeah, no thanks, but honestly, the way Sony has been handling the prices of PlayStation products this generation has gotten to the point where they're now as bad, if not worse, than Nintendo.

Let's set a scenario where we are. In the US, let's imagine I want to get into the PlayStation ecosystem and I have two stupid kids who want to play the latest EA Sports game together because they're kids and they're stupid, so how much would I have to fork? Well, there's the console itself for $500, an extra controller for $70, and EA's latest soccer game for another $70, meaning even before taxes this would already cost me $640 and that's just the bare minimum, for my example. In theory I can continue like this. What if one of my children wants to play his online game?

You can't play this game online without an active PlayStation Plus subscription, so you know what that means, there are a lot of pesky factors that come into play when it comes to saying how much. The cost of PlayStation Plus, so let's opt for an additional monthly subscription to PlayStation Plus, which costs $15 on initial purchase, but what if my kids or I are sick of playing this multiplayer game and want to get some kind of experience for single player? Well, it's time to get back to it. a copy of Spider-Man 2 to get your fix, which now adds another $70 to the total;

However, we then noticed how much space these games take up and the PS5 ships with a limited amount of storage at our disposal, so it is highly recommended that we get an SSD, which is the only storage format the PS5 can use for play PS5 games, so choosing one, which is the recommended amount of 2 tablets, will cost around $180 and since we are going to have two. controllers out there we might as well have a way to easily charge them both, it would be annoying to remember to need to plug in a cable for each controller and it would absolutely suck if one of the kids picks up a dead controller, which is a likely scenario because the battery left for the Sony controllers absolutely sucks, might as well include the official charging dock for $30 more.

Note that my scenario only takes into consideration how much all of this costs right now here in the United States, the results of My scenario can possibly be even more expensive, whether the console costs much more in other regions of the world or Sony decides to once again increase the price of PlayStation Plus for the fifth time this generation, it basically looks like this console is just getting more. and more expensive as time goes on, which is completely the opposite of how it should be. I know this issue is incredibly subjective. I know that what may seem expensive in one person's eyes may look like nonsense compared to another's, but for casual consumers, the fact that things like games are now so expensive means that the opportunity for Those people continually spending more and more on games is getting smaller and smaller, and don't they want their consumer base to continually and consistently spend on their games?

The platform is not the goal of all gaming platforms, but hey, at least the high prices are worth it, right? Maybe it's just an expensive gateway to a platform of many exclusive experiences, that has to be the case. Number two, dear Sony, where are the games? Although I said at the beginning of the video that the PS5 having very few exclusives isn't exactly the only problem going on with PlayStation, it's still a big problem that a lot of people have been noticing. Lately, even though the PS5 has been on the market for over 3 years, the number of exclusive experiences that can be had on the console is still surprisingly very small, it's so bad to the point that it's basically been a giant meme to look. the Wikipedia page for exclusive games on PS5 and look how small the list is with some people on Twitter even adding insult to injury by comparing the Wikipedia page to other similar Wikipedia pages, but for other less successful consoles and while some of These comparisons are definitely hyperbole.

I mean, the Wii U exclusive games page contains more games than the PS5 one, but that doesn't take into consideration that one of those games on the list is bad. The original argument of this post still stands on how long it lasts. The number of exclusive games the PS5 has is embarrassingly small, and I don't think it takes a very high IQ to understand that not many people will be happy to pay hundreds of dollars for a console. That doesn't offer many unique experiences and I know some of you will argue that a big reason why this is the case is that Sony made the decision to make its latest game releases cross-gen for both PS4 and PS5. and that only now will Sony finally be fully dedicated to creating games just for PS5 and look, I get it, the launch of PS5 couldn't have been at a worse time, even if they had tried, since Sony practically launched that console at the time in which The World Practically Ended, so I will say that it wasn't a morally good decision on Sony's part to have their big 2020 releases coming out now for both their 8th generation system and their 9th generation system, but I don't know, I think They also waited.

Now there is a long way to go to start making all the games. A PS5 exclusive, in their own words, the PS5 is now in the latter half of its life cycle, meaning they only have about four more years to make games for the PS5 before the PS6 comes out, which I don't think so. I don't think that's enough time to grow a huge line of Sony exclusive games for reasons I'll explain later in this video, but you know, let's say that regardless of whether they are exclusives or cross-gen releases in the At least the recent releases Sony's games are still unique experiences, is what I would say if it weren't for number three, where's the variety?

I legitimately can't be the only one who feels the variety of games coming from Sony. The studios are now at an all-time low, the games we've been receiving recently from them, as well as the diversity among IPS, have felt very semi-formular. This is what I mean. I decided to go to

playstation

.com. games section, then PS5 and simply count how many of the featured games from their internal studios are remasters, SL remakes, sequels or originals and here are the results. I found that of the 15 first-party games in total, the page had six of them being remasters or remakes, six of them being sequels, and only three of them being original games, which is certainly a ratio.

I must emphasize now that it's not exactly the number of remakes or sequels that would necessarily bother me if that were the case. I probably wouldn't be a big fan of Nintendo, a company that has pretty much been using the same characters over and over again. What really bothers me with this large number of recent PlayStation sequels and remakes is that the vast majority of them are from franchises that either originated in the PS4 era or were very prominent in the PS4 era. Spider-Man Horizon and The Last of Us are very good examples of this. It always bothered me how certain people online would complain that Nintendo never focuses on their smaller IPS in favor of only using their large IPS, but I can't believe I have to say that Nintendo has actually improved a lot on resolution on this issue. in this generation, but the most important thing is that Sony is now just as guilty of this problem if not. much worse during the change, Nintendo has made sequels, remasters and remixes for games from a variety of generations, with the oldest being the stinking famicom, while Sony can only go as deep as the PS3 era to create a new version for this generation .

I think Sony decided to pay attention to a few select game franchises and just those select few game franchises ended up making their new releases feel a lot less special in a way that's a little sad to say, but there was a time when that was the case. . I'm incredibly excited to see Spider-Man or Kratos on screen in the game trailers, but now I can't be bothered to care that much anymore because it seems like that's all we've been getting now for this generation, especially isn't it? . It helps that almost all of the IPS represented now feature games that are very similar to each other, third-person action-adventure games that push a cinematic approach in their design with serious and usually gripping stories with overly realistic graphics, but the only thing that really differentiates They being their main game.

Loops, this is not meant to criticize every game that follows this approach. I actually like some of them, but what made Playstation so great for me is that they had a VAR line of ips and franchises. Many generations ago, it's honestly incredible that Sony was able to offer such an excellent line of first-party and third-party exclusive games on the PS1, considering that unlike Nintendo during that generation, Sony had to basically start from nothing, this same line of games will also be carried over to the PS2 generation, where we would also see more IPS introduced. It actually wasn't until the PS4 generation where Sony saw the critical and financial success of games like last-gen's Uncharted 2 and The Last of Us and said, "Hey." let's make more games like that, this wasn't necessarily a bad thing in the PS4 generation as there was still some variety when it came to game releases from that era, but it's now gotten a lot worse in this generation and sadly it looks like this will be one of those problems that doesn't look like it will be resolved anytime soon, especially when by now everyone has probably seen the leaked Insomniac Games roadmap from a few months ago. lookhow silly it is, they've basically been relegated to a glorified Marvel licensed game studio now, seriously, I can't be the only one who feels incredibly depressed just looking at this, besides Marvel, they're also working on making another Marvel game.

Ratchet and Clank which I'm sure will be made as a PlayStation 6 tech showcase. and there are no real new IPS from them until the 2030s, it's cool, but you know, I would accept this variety change from Sony, not really, that It's a lie, I still tolerate it. I would tolerate this change of variety from Sony if it weren't like that. for number four Sony you are very slow due to the nature of current Sony games, they always push to use the highest quality graphics, which means that almost all PlayStation games now have extremely long development cycles.

It is quite common to have all the PlayStation games. Big studios now take years and years to complete, which plays a huge factor in why the PS5 doesn't have such a large catalog of exclusive games yet. This is also why I don't think Sony has time now to even try to create a large catalog of exclusive games for the PS5 once again. Sony has confirmed that the life cycle of the PS5 is already halfway over. I don't think four years or so is enough time for Sony to create more exclusive games on PS5 beyond the two they've already announced.

Besides some very safe assumptions, I think Sony was hoping that third-party developers could help and alleviate the problem by releasing their games in the meantime making their big chungus games like they did in the PS4 generation, but now some of those studios are also investing time similarly long development pipelines for some of their big game releases. Just look at Kingdom Hearts Mainline Persona, the Final Fantasy 7 remake, or literally every major release from Rockstar Games after Grand Theft Auto 5. I have some jelly, but you. I know what I'll give those outside editors. Meanwhile, those big games are released.

They also released smaller, less ambitious titles. Meanwhile, those games are released. Playstation can't really say that for themselves, not even for God's sake. The other two major console publishers get this memo: Nintendo and Microsoft also produced and released smaller skill games in order to give their fans something to play while they work on their more gargantuan games, and not only can these smaller games be really good, but they can also sometimes be better than the big game releases with the long development cycles. Here is a very good example. Bethesda published three games last year and Microsoft was betting its cards that Starfield would be the biggest hit of the three because it was, in fact, the biggest and best game.

Let's just say the best actual game of the three ended up winning last year anyway, back on topic. I really think PlayStation needs to go back and have studios that are involved in making smaller games with some kind of creative originality because having their entire workforce make these large scale games and only large scale games really limit the number of big ones. exclusive games that the PS5 might have an emphasis on in that sense because they actually used to have a studio in the previous generation that made that Japanese studio. was the studio responsible for some of the most creative and experimental games in PlayStation history.

They were also always my favorite PlayStation studio. A studio like them can be really beneficial in the current PlayStation era. It's a shame that Sony decided that the best course of action for handling a studio they needed more than ever is to shut it down early in this generation. I also think the fact that Sony is incredibly slow with releasing their games also relates to some of their recent questionable business decisions, as I recall. At the beginning of the PS5 generation, Sony really wanted to focus on creating multiplayer games to take advantage of the live service game boxes at the time, but since Sony's game releases are as consistent and frequent as my upload schedule from YouTube, the CZE life service has now been blocked. and burned before Sony could release any major multiplayer games because of this, a good number of online multiplayer game projects that were in the works at Sony have now been cancelled, including Naughty Dog's previously announced Last of Us online game. and also a multiplayer game. that would have been based on Insomniac Spider-Man, this one wasn't even announced at all when we found out, the project had already been canned, so yeah, cool and well I guess since I'm on the subject of Sony's game. releases now are just large scale projects, number five, why are you spending so much money on Sony, while I'm definitely sure Sony has spent millions and millions on their game budgets for years?

I think it's now gotten to the point where these games are so ridiculously expensive to make now, this is mainly because AAA games take so many more resources than ever to create, plus everything in general is so much more expensive than ever, while the budgets allocated to PlayStation's AAA game releases are not Although Sony hasn't exactly been provided as public information, we can still make a safe assumption because that huge Insomnia Games League from a while ago has been put out there. A ton of information about Insomniac's game releases is available to the public, including budgets and even sales. numbers of their games, so let's take a look at insaniac's game entries on PS5 so we can make a rough estimate of how much money Sony invests in an average PS5 game, not like that, it will take a long time, although it has only been two games. confirmed that apart from Ratchet and Clank Rift, it was barely able to turn a profit for PlayStation, which is shocking to hear since the game sold a total of almost 4 million copies, but apparently it wasn't good enough for Sony since the game It cost them $81 million.

Doing that now sounds like a lot of money, but the strap gets worse now with Spider-Man 2, that game would obviously cost a lot more than Rift aside simply because the visuals in that game are much more intensive and the game itself is also much bigger. With all that said, this game had a budget of $315 million, which is completely outrageous. I refuse to believe it cost them that much money just to make the exact same game again, only with slightly prettier visuals and a slightly larger map. Where did most of that budget go? Was it intended for Venom and all of his 19?

That's the only answer I'll accept seriously, although I feel pretty confident saying that Sony spends so much money making games like Spider-Man 2. This is probably the main reason why PlayStation products in general are now so expensive as it is that a game publisher and developer chooses to create super expensive games that take years to make is not a problem in itself, but the fact that The problem is that, in the meantime, those types of games are created and the Publisher developer simply won't make money unless they have external sources of income. Rockstar Games is so lucky that so many people spent their life savings and probably their grandparents' inheritance. on Shard cards because they are now in a position where they can focus entirely on releasing big budget games and not necessarily worry about the statuses of their releases, which is both a blessing and an absolute curse in the case of PlayStation , your external system.

The sources of income outside of game sales are console sales and PlayStation Plus subscriptions and whatever money Sony makes from them is clearly not enough for them because even though Spider-Man 2 sold 10 million of copies in the holidays of 2023, which is really good. For any video game, it still wasn't good enough to avoid massive layoffs within Sony Interactive. It all looks even worse when you start looking at games like Power World, which cost much less and sell almost the same number of copies of Spider-Man. 2 or how about Super Mario Brothers Wonder, a game that sold just as well as Spider-Man 2 even though that game was released in what were supposed to be the Twilight years of the Switch's life and once again Was it much cheaper to produce than Spider-Man 2 at this time?

It's not a problem that can be attributed to consumers becoming disinterested in the PS5 because it's getting old. It is a problem that a business model is simply unsustainable. Also, why did you acquire Bungie and why for so much money did that acquisition last almost 2 years? Years ago, PlayStation fans got some benefit from this serious question, so just to reflect on everything we've covered so far, we have a console that costs a lot of money to buy with accessories, games and subscriptions that also cost a lot of money to buy with the console. In itself it barely features any kind of exclusive experiences for the third year, Mark, with no signs of any kind of constant release of new games in the short term, well, GE, my goodness, I wonder why the expectations of sales.

Actually, you know what? let's talk about this because this has really squeezed me throughout this entire video. I'm going to go in at number six. Sony's quit mentality. I think it really shows how much Sony doesn't care and is trying to make the PS5 the best. it could possibly be when the moment the console has met with a disappointing financial year is basically saying oh it's just that the console is entering the second half of its life, people are losing interest because the console is getting old , it just means we have to launch it. the PS5 Pro or the PS6 to renew people's interest, but that's not the root of the problem, ultimately there's no one to blame for why the PS5 doesn't live up to Sony's ridiculously high expectations, besides the higher ups at that same company who have been making these dumb business decisions that have negatively affected the way people view this brand, thinking it won't matter because they think people will buy the platform regardless because it's the PS5, you love the PS4, so honestly you have to buy the PS5 PL.

This really reminds me of that time when Sony was really struggling during the early PS3 era. Both that era and this one were bad for Sony in a completely different context, but they both started out in a very similar way. Sony made dumb decisions in the beginning. of the generation after having been very successful in the last generation and not realizing the importance of their problems until it hits them directly in the wallet, but at least with the first generation of PS3, when Sony realized that they had made a real mistake, they put Rive's effort into fixing it by making the console cheaper by giving it a complete rebrand by launching a new marketing campaign and starting to release games that people would want to play and buy the console again and in the end they ended up saving itself and saving the PS3 from being a complete failure, you want to know what I think the

modern

PlayStation would do if it were in the exact same position it was in the early days of the PS3.

I'll tell you what they do, they would just give up, just look at what happened to the PlayStation vaita platform gets a report of stagnant sales once and Sony immediately pulls out. Sony really needs to take a step back and restructure the way they run their business model. PlayStation is primarily trying to find a way to engage players on its platform through consistent exclusive releases. bring something new to the table or bring back forgotten IPS that could really be in the spotlight again, even if those games had to be made on a smaller budget or didn't fit as well with AAA game releases, just give it a chance to bring More Exclusives would bring some much-needed variety and you wouldn't really have much to lose, but possibly a lot to gain if one of those smaller skill sets were to succeed, even when it ultimately failed.

Nintendo still tried to make the Wii. It is worth giving it a line of games that is certainly quite good and very good for its time, even when the company was in financial trouble, it never took it out on employees and thanks to a change of focus at the beginning of the Switch generation, Nintendo now does it. has done. It's been clearly proven that you can get people to buy and continue investing in a console, even in its Twilight stage, let alone halfway through its life cycle, and the way they were able to do that is by providing exclusive, one-of-a-kind games. and full of creativity constantly throughout their lives. its entire life, even if there were some setbacks along the way and then there is Sony which, after announcing that console sales did not meet its expectations last year, decided that the best idea is to lay off a large number of its employees and at the same timeannounce their fans don't expect big releases from them this year are you seriously punishing your employees, your consumers, the people who really give you money for not giving you more?

I'm sorry that people don't want to invest $500 more dollars into a platform. that has no exciting games in the foreseeable future it has very little value and the little value it has can be experienced on other better platforms is this a joke? Do you seriously expect me and other players to be happy waiting more than two years? Just to be able to play the exact same games again, just with different, probably worse stories, how do you expect an increase in sales for your console when there's nothing people can expect other than more of the same and keep investing? your money in ways that don't improve your platform at all Hey guys, buy our glorified $200 Wii U gam pad and while you're added, buy our PlayStation headset, go watch The Last of Us TV show, and watch our Uncharted . movie where Nathan dck is played by MCU Peter Parker and stay tuned for the $700 PS5 Pro where we would release even more remasters of the same two Last of Us games for an additional price each.

I think I honestly ended up at the end of the It's really depressing to see how much PlayStation is struggling right now. I can't deny the fact that Sony's business model in the PS4 era was definitely a huge short-term success for them in making the PS4 so successful, but that's all, it was something that worked in the short term, a business model that is simply not designed to last today and give Sony any benefit of the doubt, perhaps the mass layoffs can be a wake-up call for them. I finally turned things around, especially since this would be the month that Jim Ryan would step down as CEO of Sony Interactive after being in the role since 2019, but I can't hold my breath, I'm tired of waiting for this brand, sorry.

If this video was a much more depressing debut than I usually make, but it's something that's been frustrating me for years, the reasons I fell in love with PlayStation all those years ago simply no longer apply in this current era of the brand and that saddens me. I have a feeling that most people will just pass this video off as if I'm just an enemy or a dumb Nintendo drone or something. It's okay, I won't mind. I'm sure anyone with a real brain will at least know where I'm coming from. We currently live in a period of transition in gaming, there's a good chance that a game publisher you've known for years will change and adapt to something very different in just a few years, which may be a good thing or a bad thing, Who knows, from now on we'll just have to wait for everything to be resolved and see where this all goes, in the meantime I'll continue to enjoy gaming on the platforms I enjoy doing it most on.

Meanwhile, I occasionally remember looking at my PS5 sitting on the floor constantly collecting dust with its dim orange sleep mode LED light strip on for weeks and just saying to myself: I miss the old PlayStation. I miss them so much anyway, tune in. For the next time I talk about a bunch of stupid Mario Party games, my resistance to creating original content is really laborious. I'm telling you now. I have plans that I can't share with you now because my haters will sabotage me. I have plans that I can't