Playstation 5

In my fumbling around this morning for something to talk about, I remembered a tweet that I responded to yesterday from Charlotte McGrath of the larger FunHaus gaming ecosystem. Returnal is a game from Housemarque that seems to be blending a bunch of genres… namely the rogue-lite, bullet hell shooter and maybe a little dark souls mixed in for good measure since everything wants to be the dark souls of something. Generally speaking this is not the sort of game that would garner a ton of attention, other than the fact that it is one of a scant number of PlayStation 5 exclusive titles. This is sorta like the people who were all about Snipperclips when they had five games to play on their shiny new Switch.

I am going to admit there are times I regret the purchase of my PlayStation 5. While I did not get mine on launch day, I did manage to get a preorder that arrived five days later than expected. I have been able to count myself lucky among the folks who physically have a unit in hand… but unfortunately said console mostly sits there unused. There isn’t really a game that has made me want to play it over something I already have on my PC. I think that is the key difference for me as compared to a lot of folks that end up buying a console… it is the system of last choice. I got my PlayStation 5 because my PlayStation 4 was barely holding in there. I never went through the process of upgrading to a pro model and as such I had sorta been plotting the upgrade to PS5 since it was first announced.

I think the key difference between my experience with the PS5 and my experience when I first got my hands on the PS4 is we are in this weird moment that there really aren’t that many games on the platform that I don’t already have access to in other forms. Sony is known for being the console of exclusives but right now there is just nothing pushing me to really be playing the console. I got my PS4 with the Alpha for Destiny was announced and I managed to acquire a console and get into that alpha program with those being my very first experiences on the platform. Past that there were a number of games that were sitting there waiting on me like Infamous Second Son and Resogun that I just couldn’t experience somewhere else.

The truth is, most of the games that I am playing on my PlayStation 5 are all titles that I could be playing on my PlayStation 4. However given how much better those games play… said PS4 has mostly just been mothballed since November 17th. I did add an external hard drive so that I could play more PS4 games, but given that I went with an SSD based model I still get better performance out of those games than I did on the original console. I guess for that and that alone the upgrade was worth it for me personally, but if I had a PlayStation 4 Pro… I am not sure it would have been. I have not really done much with my console since getting it that I could not have continued doing on the older hardware.

I guess lets run down the exclusives that I am aware of on the platform so far.

• Astro’s Playroom – Pack in title, really great. Deserves more attention than it probably gets because it is Mario quality.
• Demon’s Souls – I actually played quite a bit of this game when the console was new, because it was essentially my justification for owning the big white tower.
• Destruction AllStars – was a free game through PlayStation Plus and I have it installed but have never even booted it up. eSports nonsense is not my jam.

Then you have some upcoming releases

• Returnal – Comes out today, and I already talked about it above. As per the original tweet I think this is a game a lot of folks will pick up only because they have nothing exclusive to play.
• Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart – this launches on June 11th and honestly is probably the reason why I bought my console if we are being completely honest. I wanted to own a PS5 by the time this game came out. I expected it to launch sooner… but it is what it is.

The challenge however is that if ANY of those games came out on the PC, I would buy them on that platform in a heartbeat. That is my platform of choice and unfortunately it is also the platform that is going through the most painful growing pains as it is nigh impossible to get a graphics card. Of the hotly sought out preorders of November, I feel like maybe I bet on the wrong horse. Had I put the same amount of effort into trying to lock down a RTX 3080 that I did into attempting to lock a PlayStation 5, I feel like I would ultimately be happier today. If there is any buyers remorse it is largely over that issue rather than the console itself. I know in June I will be thankful I have a PlayStation 5 because I love Ratchet and Clank, and will ultimately want to play Horizon Forbidden West on day one as well rather than waiting for the eventual PC launch.

I realize if we are being completely honest, we went through the same sluggish release schedule with the Nintendo Switch. As I stated earlier this console came out on March 3rd of 2017 and by March 31st I had managed to get my hands on one. The key difference however is that the Nintendo Switch had the massive juggernaut of Breath of the Wild to carry it forward. Sure that game was not exclusive to the platform… but no one actually owned a WiiU so it might as well have been exclusive? The same is not true with the PlayStation 4, which has sold around 116 million units to the roughly 13 million Wii U. It has been a little over 5 months since the launch of the PS5 and we have far less to show for it.

Nintendo had two things on their side, the first that they spaced out the big exclusive titles with Splatoon landing in July (roughly 3 months), and Super Mario Odyssey landing in October (roughly 6 months). The other thing is because of the relative lack of play of those Wii U titles, they could re-release a number of them for the new console and they would still feel fresh like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe landing around a month after the console release. The other big difference between these platforms is that the Nintendo Switch gave you new ways to play on the go, so it made sense to maybe rebuy some of your favorite third party games because the convertible nature of the platform.

The PlayStation 5 however is just a bigger and better version of the same thing you already had on your shelf. Reposting this picture as a reminder of just how damned massive it actually is. It doesn’t really allow anything to do something new that they were not already doing before. With the Nintendo Switch it became an interesting console that I often took to bed with me to play until I was falling asleep. The PS5 however is still operating in the same parameters that a dedicated console always has. Seeing as my preference will always lean towards mouse and keyboard on a PC, it serves the same role that consoles always do for me… allowing me to play games that I can’t get in any other way.

The other major change for me that happened this year is that I have been entirely remote. Seeing as I use consoles differently, that means they are all hooked up in my office so that I can easily capture video footage from them. I am finding it harder and harder to be upstairs at night seeing as it is my office all throughout the day. You might think… but Bel isn’t your gaming machine in your office? Sure it absolutely is, but I also have a laptop downstairs and am regularly playing remotely through Parsec streaming everything to that small screen in 1080p 60fps. Sure PlayStation technically has remote play, but they also have not really put the R&D work required to really make that optimized. There used to be a third party remote play client that was awesome… but Sony set out to crush its existence and kept making attempts to permanently break its ability to do interesting things. Essentially as it stands… the remote play experience is so much worse than the on box experience that it doesn’t really feel right to be streaming it.

So to answer the question posed in the topic of this post. Do I regret my PlayStation 5? Yeah a little bit, but not really for the reasons you might think. I regret that I took one of the market that could have gone into the hands of someone who would use it better. I regret not putting the same effort into trying to snag a 3080 and putting the money that I would have spent towards that goal instead. I don’t regret having the console however because eventually I will encounter a game that I really want to play that I can’t play through some other means. They are still hard to get so it isn’t like there is that reliable “I could have waited until X released” option. We had really bad ice storms in February… and it was only last week that I realized I had left my PS5 unplugged since then in an attempt to reduce power drain. That is a good illustration for how infrequently it gets used.

Yesterday was a bit of a cluster, as is the days that most console pre-orders go live. I was expecting something calm and orderly as it seemed to be with Sony’s system of signing up to pre-order, but that was not the case. Above is a link to the PlayStation 5 show that started at 3 pm my time and finally dropped the official price and release dates of the console. The all digital version I had been wanting would be going for $399 and the disc version for $499 and both consoles would be available starting November 12th. The consoles were to go up for pre-order on the 17th… aka today as I am writing this. That however is not at all what happened.

GameStop stores started doing in person pre-orders as the show as going on, and Walmart started their pre-order machine around 5:30 pm my time and was sold out before I had even managed to put one in my cart. Target dropped their pre-orders around 6:30 my time, and I had one in the cart but it sold out before I managed to successfully check out. Best Buy followed suit around 7 pm and once again I had one in the cart but they sold out while I was attempting to check out. Game Stop started online pre-orders around that time and by the time I even got the link they were sold out for both units. My last and only chance was Amazon and seemingly they started pre-orders at 10:30 last night… whereas I went to bed around 10:20 and once again missed the boat.

The logical part of my brain is telling me that there won’t be a single title that HAS to be played on the console until at least summer of 2021. However I am more than a little disappointed because I skipped upgrading to the PlayStation Pro thinking that the PS5 was just around the corner. As a result there is a huge backlog of PlayStation 4 era games that I have been waiting on diving into because I wanted to be able to play them in 4k. Once you get used to 4k there really is no going back, and I have been playing my PC Titles at that resolution for quite some time. Going back to the base PlayStation 4 just feels bad. Maybe I can snag a restock at some point along the line, but it seems like it is just not in the cards for me to get a PlayStation 5 this year.

So you remember that nonsense of signing up for the chance to pre-order through Sony? Well it turns out those emails also went out yesterday around 9 pm, with a second wave going out around 10 pm. I did not get an email in either case so that seemingly turned out to be nothing. This lottery is also not a guarantee, but instead you are given a unique URL that you then have to click on and try and order along with everyone else doing the same thing on Friday at 10 am Pacific Time. This too will sell out, so even if you did manage to be among the chosen by Sony, it is likely going to be another cast of fastest fingers first.

In the proud tradition of assholes flipping pre-orders, at the time of writing this there are 1919 sold listings for a PlayStation 5 on Ebay. I knew that more or less based on past experience that it would be secure a pre-order or just not have access to a PlayStation 5 this calendar year. In the past I was always one of those folks trying to get them after they were already long sold out. The first console I remember having extreme shortages for was the Nintendo Entertainment System, but the first I actively sought out was the Nintendo 64. It was the summer of the next calendar year before I was able to find one that was in store and available for purchase. With the PlayStation 2 I completely missed the boat and lucked into someone who had effectively bankrupted themselves buying it in the first place and picked it up second hand. Nintendo Wii and Nintendo Switch… I want to say I managed to pick them both up a good 4 or 5 months after the release as the major restock waves hit.

The frustrating part is that I probably could have easily scored a disc model if I wanted that. However I have been focused on trying to get one of the elusive unicorn all digital models. I say they are illusive because in all of the cases I talked about above, the Digital was the first to completely sell out. This seems to be because Sony maybe underestimated the demand for those who are like me and have zero use for a physical drive. So far I have been seeing reports that retailers are getting roughly 20% of the number of Digital units that they are physical units. In the case of GameStop this was reported to be an allocation of 10 physical units and 2 digital units per store.

Yesterday Microsoft threw a not insignificant amount of shade at the fiasco going on with the PlayStation 5 pre-orders. They begin taking pre-orders next Tuesday and are promising that they will all go live at the same time and folks will know exactly when that times is. I guess time will tell if they can somehow manage to wrangle all of the third party vendors into following the company line. I expect that it will be just as chaotic as the PlayStation mess turned out to be. Fortunately or unfortunately depending on the point of view, I will not be participating because the new Microsoft console doesn’t really do much for me personally. I think it is a phenomenal deal if you are a console only gamer, but I have a PC and I have access to pretty much all of the same games. The PlayStation has always been about exclusive titles and I have a backlog of those that I had been wanting to wait and play in a higher resolution.

The Ninth Generation of consoles has begun like so many before it as a chaotic train wreck. I expect that I will be able to get a PlayStation 5 next March once the supply loosens up a bit. Maybe by then there will be some exclusive titles to play on it. March seems to be when I get new consoles, I remember getting my PlayStation 4 right after Infamous Second Son released in 2014. If you were hunting a pre-order I hope you got one, but I have a feeling that most of us will not have. As we try and snipe any restocks… may the odds be ever in your favor.

One of the things that I generally look forward to at this time of the year are the big reveal shows. Traditionally these were part of the giant cluster of events that was E3, but with Covid still boiling through the country those are all rightfully cancelled. What exists in its place however is a number of individual productions by the big companies themselves. Last night was the big PS5 reveal event and to be truthful it felt pretty much like one of the good Sony shows of old. It was chock full of interesting titles, a number of which were console generation sellers for me personally.

The above embedded video should be queued up to the beginning of the show if you want to partake of it. If for some reason the embed is not working for you, then it is roughly 40 minutes into the Gamespot coverage. I would say the best part about getting the presentations in this manner is that it was completely devoid of big showy in person events or the horrible before and after the show hype squad trying to get us excited about what we are about to or just saw. Instead the games themselves stood on their own, which is ultimately the way I would prefer everything work from this point going forward. I am not a fan of the correspondents telling us how we should be feeling with their ever Plasticine sheen of being paid to be excited for something.

If you don’t want to sit through the entire hour and some change show, here are a list of trailers for the games that were shown off specifically.

• Grand Theft Auto 5 for some reason
• Spider-Man: Miles Morales
• Gran Turismo 7
• Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
• Project Athia
• Stray
• Returnal
• Sackboy: A Big Adventure
• Destruction Allstars
• Kena: Bridge of Spirits
• Goodbye Volcano High
• Oddworld: Soulstorm
• Ghostwire: Tokyo
• Jett: The Far Shore
• Godfall
• Solar Ash
• Hitman 3
• Astro’s Playroom – Console Pack In
• Little Devil Inside
• NBA 2K21
• Bugsnax
• Demon’s Souls
• Deathloop
• Resident Evil 8: Village
• Pragmata
• Horizon II: Forbidden West
• PS5 Console Reveal Trailer

I didn’t get to watch this as it was actually happening live, but when I got off a conference call and clocked out I picked up the stream from the very beginning. So for those who were watching it in real time my “live tweets” were delayed by about thirty minutes. If you are curious about my in the moment reactions as I was watching the presentation you can check out that twitter thread here.

The Games that Sold Me

Ultimately when it comes to a new console generation, what matters most are the games that are on it. I am by nature a PC gamer, and as a result when it comes to playing a console, you have to hook me on the exclusives. That traditionally has been the reason to own a PlayStation console, is that they have games that never (or very very very belatedly) arrive on the PC. Xbox looks like a great console but since my play method of choice is with the mouse and keyboard and the vast majority of games ultimately release as well on Windows, it is an uphill battle to make me care. So as a result I am going to talk about the three games that will have ultimately sold me this PlayStation generation.

I love that we are seeing a hand-off between Peter Parker and Miles Morales with this next Spider-man game. It looks every bit as amazing as the first one, with updated graphics for this console generation. Into the Spiderverse is one of my favorite comic book movies in general and is most definitely my favorite spider film, so I am super on board for this game. Miles is just such a great character in general and this being a launch title has me real excited.

I love the Ratchet & Clank franchise. It was probably the game series that I spent the most time playing on the PS2, and I was super into the most recent game that released a few years ago. This alone probably would have sold me a new console to be honest. I like the whole set up of dimension hopping, which should add a really interesting flair to the already frenetic gameplay. The thing about this franchise as a whole that I love is the creativity that it always brings. Super on board with this.

I love Aloy and I love Horizon Zero Dawn. I will absolutely buy the first game again when it releases on PC and I will absolutely play through it in its entirety. This was the game of the generation for me when it comes to the PlayStation 4, and I have been anxiously awaiting the sequel since 2017. The big take away from the trailer is it looks like this game is overall much larger. HZD had plenty of room to roam around but was not on the scale of many of the big open world titles. It seems like this generation is going to change that because it feels like we are covering a large area in the various biomes displayed, at least more variety that we saw in the first game. It also gives the impression of underwater combat and I really hope they stick the landing on that, as it is something that most games struggle with. I had hoped this would be a launch title, but I am guessing we will have to wait awhile.

Other Things of Interest

There were a ton of titles that I thought were interesting. Godsfall still looks really cool but I am somewhat concerned as to what sort of game it might be. Right now it looks very much like a significantly higher resolution Skyforge, which isn’t a bad thing but definite the vibe I am getting. Pete and I talked a bit last night about the concern that this is a launch title and the game didn’t really show much as far as varied environments, which gives me a concern that this might be some sort of an arena brawler which lowers my excitement considerably. It also seems the type of thing that will eventually release on PC.

Kena: Bridge of Souls looked adorable, like a blend of an action rpg with Pikmin as you appear to be gathering fuzzy adorable critters to do your bidding. I was also into the trailer for Little Devil Inside which appears to be some sort of monster hunting game, or as I referred to it Arthouse Monster Hunter. Stray was a weird game full of robots and apparently cats, which could be cool or could be incomprehensible nonsense so it is too early to tell. Goodbye Volcano High gave a strong Night in the Woods vibe, but realistic looking Anthros are always a hard sell for me personally. Deathloop was the other big title that I am looking forward to, but it isn’t a console exclusive so 99.9% chance I will just be playing this on PC.

The Big Reveal

The other big reveal of the night is that we finally got to see what the PlayStation 5 look like. I gave it some shit last night, but overall I like the look of it. I don’t like it anywhere near as much as I like the controller design, and quite honestly it reminds me of a fancy USB hub or a cable modem. The key concern that I have is that it is vertical orientation, and I question if it will be a good thing sitting it on its side. Both the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 appear to be designed so that all heat is vented through the center of the console out and out the top. Tipping the unit over may cause heat to evacuate the system less efficiently, and given the power that both are packing I would imagine heat dissipation is going to be key to sustained performance.

The other concern that I have with the horizontal orientation is that it appears that a large chunk of the unit is cantilever out over the base. I can absolutely picture my cats trying to hop up on top of this and flipping it off of the shelf. All of that aside it does at least look unique, and isn’t just a box… though admittedly I still greatly prefer the appearance of the Xbox Series X. The internet is already full of memes as is expected, but if I remember correctly there were a similar batch of memes floating around with the Xbox reveal so I think that is just part of life. The more I get used to this design the more it grows on me, but it does look like it will be a pain in the ass to break open for repair work, and this is coming from someone who has changed out several PS3 bluray drives for friends.

It’s About the Games

In the end however the design ethic of the console doesn’t really matter that much. When it comes down to purchase, it will rely solely upon the catalog of games available and this reveal hearkens back to some of the great shows from the past. The only part that was left out however was the price point, which I guess matters significantly as well. If this is a $600 console, I am not sure if one great launch game is going to make it worth the price of admission. If it is a $400 console this is an instant pre-order for me, but Sony has not shown a great willingness to launch consoles at a significant loss in the past and I fear a repeat of the PS3. I am more than likely targeting the all digital unit, given that I just don’t buy physical games and my hope is that comes with at least a $50 price break.

So what were your thoughts? Are you more interested or less interested in the PlayStation 5 at this point? Will you be instead following the path of Green and Black and going with the Xbox One X? Drop me a line in the comments and let me know your thoughts.