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Sony's first-party lineup is becoming increasingly stale and predictable

Does it just seem like that to me or does neogaf get more miserable every week?! Everything is just bad and negative. It's sometimes really exhausting to read.

I switched from the Xbox360 to the PS3 back then because of Sony's cinematic experiences and I've loved them ever since. The Last of Us 1+2, Horizon 1+2, Death Stranding 1+2, Uncharted 1-4, Tsushima/Yotei... These are the best games ever made and it makes me sad that those times are apparently over.

Maybe we'll get a Horizon 3, a TLOU Part 3, an Uncharted 5 someday. But the times when Sony released 2-3 such blockbuster games per year will probably never happen again. And to be honest, my loyalty to the Playstation brand suffers a lot from this.

At least the current wave of remakes comforts me a little. I'm a big advocate for remakes and I love them. And if it means Sony can give old classics a new lease of life for less money, then go for it!
 
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CellarDoor81 said:
Does it just seem like that to me or does neogaf get more miserable every week?! Everything is just bad and negative. It's sometimes really exhausting to read.

I switched from the Xbox360 to the PS3 back then because of Sony's cinematic experiences and I've loved them ever since. The Last of Us 1+2, Horizon 1+2, Death Stranding 1+2, Uncharted 1-4, Tsushima/Yotei... These are the best games ever made and it makes me sad that those times are apparently over.

Maybe we'll get a Horizon 3, a TLOU Part 3, an Uncharted 5 someday. But the times when Sony released 2-3 such blockbuster games per year will probably never happen again. And to be honest, my loyalty to the Playstation brand suffers a lot from this.

At least the current wave of remakes comforts me a little. I'm a big advocate for remakes and I love them. And if it means Sony can give old classics a new lease of life for less money, then go for it!
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The beatings will continue until Sony's output improves.
 
awwr999999 said:
Steam is Sony's competitor and while new PlayStations are always getting more expensive the price of new entry-level PCs is always getting lower.
On top of having permanent user libraries and zero game resale on an everlasting backwards compatible 'generation' - Steam allows AO games, has a 2hr/2wk refund policy and accepts BTC payments.
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Sony has two major advantages compared to Steam:
1. The console is cheaper.
2. (For smart people) You can buy used discs and resell them after you finish the game.
 
Another 'Sony don't make games that I like so they are bad' thread.

Will Ferrell Reaction GIF


Meanwhile, I've played and enjoyed pretty much every game they've released. I'm still playing GT7 in VR regularly. I'm currently playing and enjoying GOW SOS. I'm massively looking forward to Saros. Stale as fuck.
 
Salz01 said:
Sony isn't hungry anymore. Thats the problem.

I really wish they would bring back Warhawk.

……And Uncharted.
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This is what fanboys wanted so bad. Xbox to die. Well, they are. And sony took its foot off the gas. And is coasting. They own the high end console market. Enjoy.
 
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CellarDoor81 said:
Does it just seem like that to me or does neogaf get more miserable every week?! Everything is just bad and negative. It's sometimes really exhausting to read.

I switched from the Xbox360 to the PS3 back then because of Sony's cinematic experiences and I've loved them ever since. The Last of Us 1+2, Horizon 1+2, Death Stranding 1+2, Uncharted 1-4, Tsushima/Yotei... These are the best games ever made and it makes me sad that those times are apparently over.

Maybe we'll get a Horizon 3, a TLOU Part 3, an Uncharted 5 someday. But the times when Sony released 2-3 such blockbuster games per year will probably never happen again. And to be honest, my loyalty to the Playstation brand suffers a lot from this.

At least the current wave of remakes comforts me a little. I'm a big advocate for remakes and I love them. And if it means Sony can give old classics a new lease of life for less money, then go for it!
Click to expand...
Play more video games.
 
Markio128 said:
Another 'Sony don't make games that I like so they are bad' thread.

Will Ferrell Reaction GIF


Meanwhile, I've played and enjoyed pretty much every game they've released. I'm still playing GT7 in VR regularly. I'm currently playing and enjoying GOW SOS. I'm massively looking forward to Saros. Stale as fuck.
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Those simply aren't the kind of games people fell in love with their 1st Party for. Imagine if Nintendo started making a bunch of cinematic Sony style games, people would be pissed.
 
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Represent. said:
Those simply aren't the kind of games people fell in love with their 1st Party for. Imagine if Nintendo started making a bunch of cinematic Sony style games, people would be pissed.
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I don't get your point. Are you saying Nintendo fans would be pissed if Spider-Man, Uncharted, Horizon, TLOU, GT or GOW were on Switch?

I don't really get this cinematic game nonsense either. Ironically, we have a Zelda movie coming out soon, as well as another Mario movie.

All those Sony games I mentioned are amongst their best selling games of all time. That must mean that new players are still falling in love with their games.
 
Represent. said:
Those simply aren't the kind of games people fell in love with their 1st Party for. Imagine if Nintendo started making a bunch of cinematic Sony style games, people would be pissed.
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Nintendo fans wouldn't want Sony cinematic games? Well....no shit. That's why they bought Nintendo and not Sony.

Come On What GIF by MOODMAN
 
amscanner said:
I feel like Sony's first-party titles have been losing their spark lately, and for me, it started with Horizon Zero Dawn.


Since then, it's been a constant stream of the same "cinematic experiences." We got Marvel's Spider-Man, then the samey Miles Morales expansion, followed by the "emotional" God of War and Ragnarok. Then Ghost of Tsushima, and now Ghost of Yotei... the list of formulaic open-world/action titles just keeps growing.


I've played through all of them, but they've become incredibly predictable and, frankly, boring. Sure, they sell well for now, but the genuine excitement is gone. Sony really needs to find a new direction for their single-player games instead of just churning out "Premium Ubisoft Slops."


In my opinion, Returnal is the only truly exciting and innovative game we've seen this generation. It felt fresh and pushed the medium forward. I'm really looking forward to Saros, and I sincerely hope Sony doubles down on games like that—titles that prioritize unique gameplay over safe, cinematic tropes.


What do you guys think? Is Sony stuck in a creative rut, or is this just what "AAA" has to be now?
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Go buy an Xbox, you deserve it.
 
DoctorFish said:
The beatings will continue until Sony's output improves.
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Don't hold your breath. Big games take a long time and a shit-ton of money to make.

Trying to float a platform on first party alone is financial suicide, so its advantageous for them to simply treat key third-party product as if it was first-party.
 
Well, they closed all the studios. All the remaining outfits are just doing what they've been doing. Most likely some sequel. Most likely open world. It's to be expected.
 
Hollywood Hitman said:
There's so much shit to play every year it's like I couldn't even fit in any more so it's whatever, I litrelly never have a single dull moment in gaming these days
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I just put over 110 hours into trails beyond horizon. Last thing on my mind is what PS is doing. Anyone relying on one company to deliver games in this environment is stupid. To be fair though I feel the same way about all the stuff Microsoft is releasing and Ubisoft. I just don't go creating threads about it because I don't give a shit.
 
Naughty Dog was the worst thing that happened to Sony believe it or not, they copied its recipe with almost all their games for at least 2 generations and their developers became complacent and lost their imagination. The live service fad was the second worst...
 
Sonik said:
Naughty Dog was the worst thing that happened to Sony believe it or not, they copied its recipe with almost all their games for at least 2 generations and their developers became complacent and lost their imagination. The live service fad was the second worst...
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Without Naughty Dog the PS3 doesn't gain momentum that leads to the PS4 and 5s success.
 
mayham2199 said:
I just put over 110 hours into trails beyond horizon. Last thing on my mind is what PS is doing. Anyone relying on one company to deliver games in this environment is stupid. To be fair though I feel the same way about all the stuff Microsoft is releasing and Ubisoft. I just don't go creating threads about it because I don't give a shit.
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Yea same, I view games as games... I prefer the ps5 ecosystem because I love platinums but I look at it all as whole, I want sony games, I want ms games, I want 3rd party etc... I've platinumed and banged out so many games as of late, a variety of atomfall, yotei, Indiana Jones, dragon quest 1 and 2, 3 and now 7, these awesome 2D side scrollers, playing Nioh 3 now as well, battlefield 6 for shooter MP match stuff, I have a game for every mood I'm in and it's constant... There's never a dull moment.

I personally remember 20 years, 25 years ago on ign and VN boards the constant bitching about first party games and this and that, that's imo a young man's gripe... I want games I don't give a flying fuck where they come from, Sony, ms, 3rd party, my ass, wherever... I just play and have fun
 
FStubbs said:
Without Naughty Dog the PS3 doesn't gain momentum that leads to the PS4 and 5s success.
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I agree that they were great for them at the time but Sony copy pasting their recipe over and over again has proven disastrous. I'm just sick and tired of the ND recipe
 
Sonik said:
I agree that they were great for them at the time but Sony copy pasting their recipe over and over again has proven disastrous. I'm just sick and tired of the ND recipe
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What recipe? Are we pretending Ghost of Tsushima, God of War, Spider-man and Horizon is based on a Naughty Dog "recipe"?
 
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Topher said:
What recipe?
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Full on "cinematic" games, close third person camera with plenty of scripted action, so easy that is almost becoming pointless platforming or puzzles, and expensive af productions that forced Sony to go the safest, most inoffensive, easiest route possible to keep up with the costs, so kinda like Hollywood ruined their own industry
 
Hollywood Hitman said:
Yea same, I view games as games... I prefer the ps5 ecosystem because I love platinums but I look at it all as whole, I want sony games, I want ms games, I want 3rd party etc... I've platinumed and banged out so many games as of late, a variety of atomfall, yotei, Indiana Jones, dragon quest 1 and 2, 3 and now 7, these awesome 2D side scrollers, playing Nioh 3 now as well, battlefield 6 for shooter MP match stuff, I have a game for every mood I'm in and it's constant... There's never a dull moment.

I personally remember 20 years, 25 years ago on ign and VN boards the constant bitching about first party games and this and that, that's imo a young man's gripe... I want games I don't give a flying fuck where they come from, Sony, ms, 3rd party, my ass, wherever... I just play and have fun
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That's why I play on PC. I want em all. Never got platform wars. Im glad Xbox is forced to port games to PS5 and PC. Less consoles I have to buy to play games.
 
Deficit said:
That's why I play on PC. I want em all. Never got platform wars. Im glad Xbox is forced to port games to PS5 and PC. Less consoles I have to buy to play games.
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Yea I used to be pc main but after buying the 4090 and how some of these recent games weren't optimized that well I sorta just got bugged by it but yea if I wasn't a platinum hunter I'd absolutely main pc, but yea I sorta never got into the first party only type mentality alot have... Just give me games, there's so many that come out every year it's staggering
 
Sonik said:
Full on "cinematic" games, close third person camera with plenty of scripted action, so easy that is almost becoming pointless platforming or puzzles, and expensive af productions that forced Sony to go the safest, most inoffensive, easiest route possible to keep up with the costs, so kinda like Hollywood ruined their own industry
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So you just don't like cinematic games. That's fine, but you made it out like every game Sony made was a carbon copy of Uncharted and TLOU and that's simply false.
 
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Here is the wasteful amount of damage caused by Sony's live service push this generation:

- Concord spent untold millions and 5 years of development time only to become the biggest bomb in gaming history.
- Firesprite, who so far have only released a Horizon VR game this gen, wasted a good amount of time making a Twisted Metal live service game which ended up cancelled in 2024.
- The Last of Us Factions took up 3 years of Naughty Dog developers' time, only to be cancelled.
- Bluepoint of all people, who's wheelhouse was remakes and remasters, spent 3 years developing a God of War live service game (!!!) only to have it cancelled. I would not be surprised if Sony are scrambling to repurpose the art assets in the just announced God of War Trilogy Remake.
- Bend Studio, instead of making a much requested Days Gone 2, has wasted the generation making a now cancelled live service game.
- Deviation was acquired and spent 3 years making a live service game which was ultimately cancelled and the studio shut down without ever releasing anything...
- Bungie cancelled a live service game condemned Payback, which was greenlit after Sony acquired them, after 2 years in development.

Without Jim Ryan's pursuit of live service, we could've had:

- Firesprite having more manpower to release their project Heartbreak by now, which is rumored to be a single player narrative game
- Naughty Dog having more manpower to get Intergalactic out sooner, perhaps even this year. They are currently needing to crunch like hell to finish their internal demos.
- Bluepoint releasing another remake/remaster by now. Demon's Souls remake was over 5 years ago so that is plausible
- Bend Studio could've had Days Gone 2 or another new IP out by now. Days Gone was almost 7 years ago, again plausible.
- Bungie could've released Marathon last year (they cancelled Payback to put more people on Marathon, which was delayed till 2026)
- The money wasted funding Firewalk's Concord disaster and Deviation's nothingburger could've been spent acquiring other studios

This is a lost generation for many of Sony's teams and the company has relied strongly on third parties this gen to plug up holes in its release calendar. I sincerely hope that they learn their lesson and come back swinging on PS6 - not forcing single player centric studios to make live service games under Bungie's purview.
 
Sony makes most of its PS money now from mtx and live service games. Which means they don't feel much pressure to rethink their first party lineup. This combined with their focus on DEI has made them increasingly less interesting to me each year.
 
Killer8 said:
Here is the wasteful amount of damage caused by Sony's live service push this generation:

- Concord spent untold millions and 5 years of development time only to become the biggest bomb in gaming history.
- Firesprite, who so far have only released a Horizon VR game this gen, wasted a good amount of time making a Twisted Metal live service game which ended up cancelled in 2024.
- The Last of Us Factions took up 3 years of Naughty Dog developers' time, only to be cancelled.
- Bluepoint of all people, who's wheelhouse was remakes and remasters, spent 3 years developing a God of War live service game (!!!) only to have it cancelled. I would not be surprised if Sony are scrambling to repurpose the art assets in the just announced God of War Trilogy Remake.
- Bend Studio, instead of making a much requested Days Gone 2, has wasted the generation making a now cancelled live service game.
- Deviation was acquired and spent 3 years making a live service game which was ultimately cancelled and the studio shut down without ever releasing anything...
- Bungie cancelled a live service game condemned Payback, which was greenlit after Sony acquired them, after 2 years in development.

Without Jim Ryan's pursuit of live service, we could've had:

- Firesprite having more manpower to release their project Heartbreak by now, which is rumored to be a single player narrative game
- Naughty Dog having more manpower to get Intergalactic out sooner, perhaps even this year. They are currently needing to crunch like hell to finish their internal demos.
- Bluepoint releasing another remake/remaster by now. Demon's Souls remake was over 5 years ago so that is plausible
- Bend Studio could've had Days Gone 2 or another new IP out by now. Days Gone was almost 7 years ago, again plausible.
- Bungie could've released Marathon last year (they cancelled Payback to put more people on Marathon, which was delayed till 2026)
- The money wasted funding Firewalk's Concord disaster and Deviation's nothingburger could've been spent acquiring other studios

This is a lost generation for many of Sony's teams and the company has relied strongly on third parties this gen to plug up holes in its release calendar. I sincerely hope that they learn their lesson and come back swinging on PS6 - not forcing single player centric studios to make live service games under Bungie's purview.
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Yet after all that, the PS5 is becoming their most successful generation. They must be doing something right.
 
Topher said:
So you just don't like cinematic games. That's fine, but you made it out like every game Sony made was a carbon copy of Uncharted and TLOU and that's simply false.
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It's not that I don't like them, it's that I got sick and tired of the recipe when it was served to me again and again, I used to be the biggest fan of Uncharted. And they're not just cinematic games, it's a distinct ND recipe, Santa Monica for example has become Naughty Dog v2 with what they did with GoW
 
Sonik said:
It's not that I don't like them, it's that I got sick and tired of the recipe when it was served to me again and again, I used to be the biggest fan of Uncharted. And they're not just cinematic games, it's a distinct ND recipe, Santa Monica for example has become Naughty Dog v2 with what they did with GoW
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You are saying games with entirely different game play systems have the same recipe and it's just not true
 
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Markio128 said:
Yet after all that, the PS5 is becoming their most successful generation. They must be doing something right.
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A tired defence that's always thrown out whenever any criticism is levelled at Sony for having mismanaged their studios this gen and their live service push.

I'm convinced by now that Sony could release literally nothing and as long as the profit line keeps going up, they'd have people fervently defending them. "They must be doing something right", after all.

It's in YOUR best interest that Sony stops mismanaging their studios because it means more games in YOUR console. There is literally nothing to gain here by excusing mediocrity.
 
Sony's first party lineup is creatively bankrupt and has been for a long time. It all started during the PS3 days, where they started to value cinematic presentation over gameplay. Sure, this has attracted a certain amount of people and made them money, but creatively it's a dead end. It's also way too expensive and not sustainable. Because this approach is so expensive, it's why it is so predictable (or "safe"). Predictability will eventually lead to boredom. And boredom will lead to declining sales. Sony is basically fucked in the long run (next 10 years).
 
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GoW 2018 is the last first party I think is borderline "must buy". There's been a lot of generic open world mixed with "cinematic experiences" since then.
 
you gotta just accept that for now Sony is targetting the largest audience possible. Normies eat up AAA games like Ghost of Tsushima, Spiderman, Wolverine, etc. I'd much prefer they made 2x the amount of games, in more niche genres on a smaller budget ($70 million instead $140 million per game), but it is what it is.

Eventually people will get bored of cinematic slop, just like how they got bored of MCU movies, but it'll take a while.
 
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Sony seems to have been in a creative slump over the past 4 years or so. I think it's partly related to prioritizing GaaS and partly due to increased corporatization. The recent SoP was encouraging, but still, most of what I'm looking forward to in 2026 is either multiplatform or an "Xbox" game.

I do like many of the games listed as dull in the OP, though, and I'm not much for the Returnal/Soras stuff. Different tastes.
 
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SlimySnake said:
They literally topped goty awards in 2009, 2013, 2016, 2018, and 2020. almost all of their ps4 exclusives sold 5-20 million.

Its just this gen they have been mid tier aside from that one year where astro bot won due to a complete lack of competition.

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GOW 2018 won best game of all time at ign. 30-40 million votes.
 
Merline said:
Nope

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2025
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Even after the live-service disaster, Sony didn't just outperform the competition in single-player. They flat-out humiliated them.

Nintendo? Since the Switch 2 launch, mostly garbage. Microsoft Studios? Overhyped, underwhelming, forgettable. Big promises, weak execution.

The truth might be hard to swallow, but when it comes to single-player games, Sony is the industry leader. I'm already looking forward to the salty tears when Naughty Dog's Intergalactic ratings hit.

And before anyone says games like Kena don't count, they do. Being under the PlayStation Studios banner means Sony finances, co-develops, and backs the developers every step of the way.
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Sequels that are all worse than their predecessors, a remake, a remaster, and several games that are actually third-party exclusives or financed by Sony, such as Rise of the Ronin by Team Ninja and Death Stranding 2 by Kojima Productions. The only thing on par with what Sony's first parties offered in other generations is Astrobot.

And the Switch 2 has been on the market for months, if we count the games released by Nintendo from 2020 to now...
 
LyricalShrike said:
.
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crazyriddler said:
Sequels that are all worse than their predecessors, a remake, a remaster, and several games that are actually third-party exclusives or financed by Sony, such as Rise of the Ronin by Team Ninja and Death Stranding 2 by Kojima Productions. The only thing on par with what Sony's first parties offered in other generations is Astrobot.

And the Switch 2 has been on the market for months, if we count the games released by Nintendo from 2020 to now...
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TOTK and mario kart world fall in the same boat sequels that feel like DLC and not anywhere as fresh or good as the predecessors.
 
Deficit said:
That's good. I just find most people who really like those games are usually newer to gaming.
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Let's be honest. People only stopped liking Sony games when they became woke. That 90% reason why gaf shits on them. Everyone used to praise the shit out of them before that. Last of us 2 was the first game where there was a shift and it's only been downhill Since than. Even insomniac are disliked around here now. They were one of the most loved studios just a few years ago.
 
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