In 2010 following a 25-year study, researchers at the University College of London discovered boredom increased a person’s probability of dying by 40%. Primarily from stroke or heart disease, but it could be argued boredom was a side effect of the sedentary lifestyle of the civil workers that the study followed. Thus eliminating the causality conclusion. Why is that important or even relevant? Simply because after watching the Playstation 5’s stream, I had to look up if it was possible to actually die from boredom. Only to discover it is a contributing factor to shortening your lifespan.
The Future of Playstation was an event Sony hyped up as a premier gameplay presentation of what was coming for the Playstation 5 at launch and beyond. Despite being longer than Microsoft’s “gameplay” stream, during its duration, it somehow managed to show less gameplay. Instead it focused the runtime on Cinematic Gameplay trailers that would be representational of what you’ll experience when the game is complete and in your hand.
Sony’s lack of gameplay became so abhorrently apparent when twice during the stream they announced they were going to cut out to gameplay (Horizon Forbidden West and Hitman 3) only for them to cut to some collage of developers speaking. Saying nothing of noteworthiness other than Playstation 5 will be great.
What was shown during the steam was spectacularly uninspiring. Yes, it is my subjective opinion which games I take an interest in, but even the few shown that I’d want to play were presented in a dull lifeless by the numbers context less fashion.
Resident Evil Village’s grand announcement should have been the heart of the show. An impressive showstopper that would have everyone abuzz with hype for the next iteration in the long-running horror franchise. Instead, it was just a collage of scenes strewn together without any linking factor other than to show off the diverse range of environments and enemies you’ll see in the game, but without a single bit of context. Without context, there was no manner to understand or even get hyped for any of the scenes being shown.
In there lied both Sony’s greatest strength and weakness for the conference. Rather than dragging out the presentation with pointless banter or virtue signaling, they opted to have the products speak for themselves. Certainly for many of the indi games that were presented this would have been both the traditional and smart method to go about it, but for major titles like Resident Evil Village, Horizon Forbidden West, Hitman 3, Grand Theft Auto 5 Update, and beyond this was a terribly wasted opportunity.
Major titles should have been given interviews and details to give context to the products we were about to see. Rather than the absent or short prelude, followed by roll short clip, that was the primary style of the stream. Giving us only inferences into the products that the most hardcore will be able to excite themselves over, and certainly, content creators will be pouring over clips doing frame analysis. Still, the average viewer this entire affair was nigh pointless except for a few choice announcements.
Worse is the fact most of the products are not even going to be available around the PS5’s launch. The best titles were all scheduled for deep into 2021 or were launching prior to the console with a next-generation version available when the PS5 launches or shortly thereafter.
At the conclusion of the show, we were given a look at what the PS5 will look like in all its modernist glory. Spec-wise it is fully confirmed to be vastly underpowered compared to both the PC and Xbox Series X, so there isn’t much for Sony’s fanboys to hype themselves up over.
All in all, this stream was a massive misstep and missed opportunity for Sony. Where excitement and hype could have been grabbed by giving proper context and hype to the games with promises of even more greatness to come. It instead was a file dump of trailers in a stream format. Practically a waste of anyone’s time who bothered to watch the conference live. What did you think of the stream? Post what you liked, hated, or slipped into a coma over in the comments below.