The first ever PlayStation State of Play presentation aired yesterday, offering PS4 and PSVR owners a look at the games they can expect to play in the future. With speculation going off the rails ahead of the show, many expressed disappointment at what Sony had to offer. But were you pleased with what was shown?
The GameRevolution team had mixed thoughts about the show, and as always you can share your own opinions in the comments section below. We’ll feature our favorite response in tomorrow’s Tell GR!
Paul Tamburro, executive editor: “As we’ve learned with Nintendo, companies can’t announce these Direct-esque presentations without everyone losing their minds beforehand. The truth is that the vast majority of Nintendo Directs have been disappointing compared to what viewers have speculated beforehand, so my expectations weren’t exactly high for the PlayStation State of Play considering the PS4 is reaching the end of its life cycle. I own a PSVR so I was happy to see some more games announced for it, but I wasn’t expecting Sony to move the Earth or anything.”
Jason Faulkner, senior editor: “I thought the PlayStation State of Play was a cheap copy of a Nintendo Direct. The stream wasn’t announced as being predominantly about PSVR, and although I’m enthusiastic about that platform, most PS4 owners don’t have one. For this to be the first stream in this new format, Sony really needed to knock it out of the park, and there just wasn’t much there to get excited about.
The announcements were cool enough, but they were more press release level than anything that needed a whole stream. The script also didn’t do a lot to tell you anything about what was being shown. The Crash Racing trailer, for example, showed some PS4 exclusive stuff for the game, but instead of going into detail and pointing out what that was, they just moved onto the next clip. I don’t really think this format is right for Sony, because they have a small number of huge first-party releases and exclusives, and they’re obviously not ready to show any of them. They’d have been better off just keeping to the formula that’s been successful for them for years instead of trying to cut out the press and market directly to consumers. That only really works for Nintendo because so much of their key game development is in-house.”
Mack Ashworth, lead editor: “I didn’t mind the first PlayStation State of Play video. I didn’t expect much to begin with, and so I was pleasantly surprised to see PlayStation VR well-represented. With that said, it would probably have been better for them to have gone big with the debut. You only get one first impression and, while I don’t think the internet is a fair place, the folks at Sony should have known to make a big splash with the initial stream.”
Michael Leri, features editor: “The State of Play stream was pretty good but with obvious room for improvement. It had a few decent announcements and anything that has a Mortal Kombat trailer or Ice Cube is automatically great. People probably need to lower their expectations if they were expecting huge, megaton reveals. Events like this are only additive and the only reason you’ll be disappointed is if you hype it up too much. Sony is probably going to polish up the format in the future and hopefully add at least one human face to it. Otherwise, I’m pleased with the idea and first crack at it.”
Yesterday’s best reader comment
Question: What is the most overrated game ever?
Longo_2_guns: “Super Smash Bros. Don’t get me wrong, I get why Smash is a good game. Hell, it’s a damn good game. The problem with Smash is that half of the purpose of the game is to be a party game, and it is a mediocre party game.
Let’s look at Mario Kart. The random items are annoying, but they provide an important balancing factor between the players who have played 3 hours and the players who have played 300 hours. In Smash, the items barely help balance, and are mostly just for variety. With other fighting games the basic game logic is the same. You can drop a guy who is good at Street Fighter into Mortal Kombat and he’ll do fine. But Smash Bros is different from every other game, which means the only way to learn to play it is to invest a fuckton of time into it.
I could go on, but from what almost always happens at parties when Smash Bros comes out is the guy who played it a ton in college and the guy who played it growing up with his brothers will dominate every match until everyone else quits to look at memes on their phones.”
