It only took just shy of four years, but I finally want a PlayStation 5. Sure, Street Fighter 6 looks neat, and me being a Star Wars fan I’d love to try out the latest Jedi game and even dabble in Outlaws, but it’s Astro Bot that has me wishing I had one of those obnoxiously ugly monoliths under my TV today. I haven’t been too keen on PlayStation for a number of years now, but it wasn’t always this way. I used to love PlayStation, and with the amazing promise of Astro Bot, I’m hopeful that I can get there again.

I write about Nintendo a lot. I’m a Nintendo fan, and I have been ever since I first touched an NES controller with Super Mario Bros. at my friend’s house. Of course, before that I was an Atari fan, and I never stopped being one when Nintendo came around. I thought my uncle’s Master System was pretty neat, too. Games were games, no matter where you played them, and I never felt a sense of superiority with my system over someone else’s. But then, the Console Wars began. 

I wasn’t all that media-aware when Intellivision was taking pot shots at Atari, so when the Sega Genesis arrived on the scene, declaring that it did what Nintendidn’t, I foolishly chose a side, and that side was Nintendo. 

I missed out on a lot of great games because of that, and I was fully prepared to continue to do so when the Nintendo 64 hit the scene. I never cared much for Crash Bandicoot, and Super Mario 64 was a revelation. But then Castlevania showed up on PlayStation. Final Fantasy VII showed up on PlayStation. Metal Gear Solid showed up on PlayStation. These properties that I had come to love on my Nintendo platforms were jumping ship, and I simply couldn’t take it any more. I went to my local Electronics Boutique and picked up a PlayStation with a copy of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and I was immediately hooked. The startup screen, the controllers, the wondrous things the CD-ROM format could do that the N64 could never dream of, were all amazing. I specifically remember a friend of mine coming over to my house with his rented copy of Mace: The Dark Age. We played it for a bit, but when I booted up Soul Blade on the PlayStation, a 32-bit system that was supposedly half as powerful as the N64, it completely blew it out of the water. 

The PlayStation helped me shake off my Nintendo blinders, and it kicked off a long-term love of the brand. I still had tons of fun with my Nintendo 64, but I came to appreciate the kinds of games that were landing on PlayStation, and by extension Saturn. I went back and picked up a Sega Genesis, TurboGrafx-16, 3DO, and enjoyed as many games on as many platforms as I was able to. I loved how different everything felt back then. Each system had their strengths and personalities, and as much as I didn’t love some of the PlayStation identity, there was way more that I loved than I didn’t. 

I spent countless hours with my PlayStation and all the weird, awesome games on it. And while I had a definite chip on my shoulder when the PS2 basically killed the Dreamcast because it had a DVD player in it, you better believe when that system got its feet under it that I played a metric ton of great games there as well. Okage: The Shadow King, Katamari Damacy, Metal Gear Solid 2, Ico, Amplitude, God of War, Guitar Hero, the sheer quantity of great games across all genres was astounding. I was still a Nintendo fan above everything else, but PlayStation had earned a place in my heart for two solid console generations. 

That started to change with the PlayStation 3. Not only was the system enormous and crazy expensive, there weren’t any games on it I needed to play besides Metal Gear Solid 4, which I bought before I even had a system to play it on. I did wind up getting a PS3 eventually, but I picked up very few games for it. Granted, the Xbox 360 was a factor in that equation, as well as me reaching a point in my life where I had less and less time to actually play games, but from a pure numbers perspective, my PlayStation fandom dropoff is kind of crazy to look back at. In my collection right now, I own 142 PlayStation games, 145 PS2 games, and a whopping 11 games for my PS3, and 5 for my PS4. Toss in my 7 PS3 digital downloads, and you still have a mere fraction of the number of games I bought on previous generations. Again, there are a lot of factors in this change, including time and budget, but the real issue came down to the games themselves. PlayStation stopped making the kinds of games I wanted to play. 

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Fast forward to today, and we have the perfect distillation of modern PlayStation represented by two games. Concord, and Astro Bot. On one hand, we have Concord, a massive, big budget, hyper-realistic live service hero shooter being billed as the next big thing. On the other, we have Astro Bot, a creative 3D platformer with a third of Concord’s budget that celebrates PlayStation’s history. And the public’s reaction to these two games couldn’t possibly be different. 

Concord stands as a perfect example of everything wrong with PlayStation’s current approach to games. Not to sound too mean, but the entire thing struck me as extremely creatively bankrupt from the moment it was unveiled. The dialogue all sounds like what people think Guardians of the Galaxy sounds like. (It doesn’t. The Guardians movies are actually really great). But there’s a snarky goofball guy, a stoic warrior, a badass girl, etc. This guy likes hot sauce! Isn’t that quirky! It’s just… eeehhhhh. And the general consensus was that my feelings were shared by the vast majority of players. This genre was already oversaturated 5 years ago, but Sony was desperate to chase that trend and get in on the infinite money printing business that they went ahead and launched the game anyway, and their hubris bit them big time. Concord was a massive flop, with its servers being turned off and refunds being issued a mere 2 weeks following its launch. 

Now, look at what people are saying about Astro Bot. I can’t remember the last time I saw this many people genuinely excited about a PlayStation exclusive. Sure, there was ferver about getting the PS5 console itself, but the games haven’t really moved the needle, at least nowhere near as much as Astro Bot seems to have. Here’s a game that isn’t hyper realistic, that isn’t designed to become a lifestyle, and is focused first and foremost on being fun. And it seems like it’s about to do gangbusters for Sony. And I hope with all my heart that this is a wakeup call for the higher ups and not a one-off flash in the pan. 

Recently, I’ve been writing a series of posts called The Nintendo Report, where I’m breaking down all of Nintendo’s IP and seeing how they’re doing today. It was so much fun, I thought it would be neat to do the same for PlayStation, and let me tell you, writing those is MUCH more depressing than doing it for Nintendo. The sheer quantity of original properties that Sony has produced over the years with absolutely no followup is astounding. Meanwhile, a Sony Exec recently went on record as saying something to the effect of following Concord, Sony just doesn't have that many brands to fall back on. 

Utter madness. It’s Sony’s own failure to foster their brands that has put them in this position. Nintendo has the massive catalog they do because they take the time to iterate and grow their games. They don't always do a perfect job of it, but there’s a reason their properties are so well loved, and so many of Sony’s are simply forgotten. Alundra? Blasto? Jumping Flash? Heck, Jak & Daxter? Sly Cooper? The list of IP they currently own is staggering, and darn near rivals Nintendo’s. Sony owns Q*Bert! They made a whole successful TV series out of Twisted Metal, but its last release was over a decade ago! Where the heck did Syphon Filter or Jumping Flash disappear to? 

Outside of Nintendo, the game industry is going through a real rough patch. Games have gotten too expensive to make, and the notion that everything has to be some sort of massive infinite money printing “live service” has turned off everyone to just how good non “AAA” games can really be. This year, with the Switch on its last legs, we’re seeing a small scale Zelda game, an HD remake of Luigi’s Mansion 2 and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, Emio: The Smiling Man, Another Code Recollection, and more small scale projects that are doing great for Nintendo. They aren’t raking in billions, but they don't have to, because they didn’t cost billions to make. And you know what? Nintendo fans have been pretty darn happy. 

Sony needs to re-learn this lesson. They got off to such a great start with PlayStation and PlayStation 2. The PSP was cool too, minus the absurd UMD format, and the PS3 was ultimately a solid machine, despite my lack of interest in its extended library. (Their announcement of a $700 PlayStation 5 Pro doesn't exactly fill me with confidence). But now, today, with the gaming landscape being what it is, it’s time to stop chasing the infinite money printing machines and get back to just making interesting games that people want to play. Not play forever, just play until the next one comes along. This need to rake in all of the money instead of enough money is what’s positively choking this entire industry, and it has to stop. It simply isn’t sustainable. We’re seeing a similar thing in the Television and Movie spaces, and it’s terrifying. Mass layoffs and cancellations happen every week, but the template exists to do this stuff right. The wheel can continue to be refined, but it doesn’t need to be reinvented. I want so badly for Sony to become the kind of company who makes games I want to play again. Fingers crossed Astro Bot is a sign of things to come.