Play Games
3 hours ago
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There’s no doubt in my mind that Sony has now mastered the State of Play.
Unlike in years past, I think it’s rare to see complaints about pacing and presentation anymore. At this point, it’s all about the content – which is how it should be, of course.
While I don’t think last night’s showcase was as good as the one in February 2026, I’m very happy with it overall. I know some people had higher expectations owing to the earlier announcement and cinema showings, but in the lead up, I did caution against those.
I saw some people losing their mind over the appearance of a countdown clock on the official PlayStation website, for example, but as I pointed out in my article, that wasn’t even on the homepage. I think some people do this to themselves.
Looking back at the list of announcements, there’s more than ten games from the livestream that I want to buy. That’s a remarkable hit rate. In fact, it’s probably easier to list the ones I’m not particularly interested in: Dune Awakening and No Rest for the Wicked.
I’m also a bit mixed on Kemuri personally, but it had a lot of style so I totally understand why Sony decided to include it.
That’s not a slight against those three games by the way – this is just a personal preference thing. I don’t expect every single game at every single showcase to appeal personally to me – I’m more than happy with the dozen or so that did.
If I was to criticise the show somewhat, I do think it lacked a genuine surprise.
Ultimately, I don’t think that’s Sony’s fault: there’s absolutely no doubt in my mind, from the way it was presented, the God of War Laufey reveal would have been a jaw dropper without the leaks.
I can certainly understand why Santa Monica Studio’s Head of Creative Cory Barlog showed some irritation on social media last month.
Robbing the show of that moment did bring it down several notches in my opinion, but I think the decision to show 20 minutes of uncut footage was bold. I really wasn’t sure about the premise of this new God of War game based on the rumours, but now I understand what it’s trying to do better, I’m fully on board.
There were a few things that caught me off guard, however: I never expected to see Until Dawn 2 during this show, even though it had been rumoured for a little while. Fair play to my colleague Aaron, who did mention that in our Slack chat.
The reveal of Stuntman: Hollywood was a genuine fist-pumper for me as well; I loved that game on the PS2, and I think incorporating real-life movie licenses into the action is such a big win. I absolutely can’t wait for that to come out.
It’s been overshadowed a little bit, but I feel like ArcSystem Works saved the best Marvel Tokon team for this livestream as well. Are you kidding me with Green Goblin’s design? He looks so much fun.
And I mean, there were lots of little things sprinkled in there that I appreciated: the return of Gitaroo Man, the Ace Combat Zero pre-order bonus, the Dave the Diver spin-off Bancho the Chef – definitely not shock-and-awe inclusions, but things that speak to me.
Generally, I’ve been saying for some years now that I think the PlayStation audience is utterly insatiable; browsing my social media feed these past 24 hours, there’s such a spectrum of contradicting opinions that I don’t think there’s anything Sony could do to please everyone.
I really don’t want to sit here and be one of those toxic positivity personalities, because everyone is entitled to their own outlook. But I hope PlayStation is able to filter out as much of the noise as possible, act on the correct kind of feedback, and move forward accordingly.
But I’m not sure there’s a lot the manufacturer can do to legitimately improve here, it’s always going to come down to the content, and for me this show had a large number of games with actual gameplay and release dates that I actually want to buy.
I don’t think this presentation will live long in the memory like some of the E3 all-timers, but the industry has changed. These State of Plays are more frequent now, which I actually think is a good thing, as it means there’s always something to look forward to.
If the goal of the presentation was to get me excited about a bunch of different PS5 games, then I can’t really complain.
