Video: The Biggest PlayStation Surprises of 2024

Astrobot winning GotY and 3 other awards. In a world of 40 hour open world epic rpg did not see a 12 hour single player platformer winning. Though these people also gave “ It Takes Two” GotY so maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised.

Concord bombing was not a surprise, seemed almost preordained. Sony then retconning out of existence instead of trying to make a go of it free to play at least thru the episode of it’s show was surprising.

Helldivers 2.

The fact that we still don’t have a remake/remaster/60fps patch for Bloodborne.

Edit-Sorry, I thought the question was ‘What was the most unsurprising, expected, predictable thing PlayStation did in 2024?’

I like speculating on the future of the industry , but this just shows you cant really anticipate unexpected events. 2025 might start with a surprise too, if Sony ends up acquiring Kadokawa.

@rjejr It's way longer than that if you play every level.

Game of the Year means nothing to me if I don't plan to play those games, I only play those that gives enjoyment and if said games happened to be new and got the nomination, good to know👌👏
Also, many like me just follow news and don't bother to vote, even sometimes like the polls here

For a 'bad year' for Sony, it's overall been a pretty darn good year for PS5 owners.

I don't think Concord bombing surprised normal gamers. Although I didn't expect it to fall quite as flat on its face as it did, lol

@rjejr That's a little disingenuous. I spent a little over 20 hours and didn't actually 100% Astro Bot. I also haven't played any of the newer challenge or update levels.

Sony has hit the highest highs and the lowest lows this year.

The industry will definitely change...... and I am optimistic that it will be for the better. So many games have flopped this year when many were sure that it would be a guaranteed success. but the opposite was the case.

I'm excited to see what awaits us next year.

Good surprise: how much I enjoyed Animal Well.

Bad surprise: how disappointing Rise of the Ronin was (although I've only played bits of it on a friend's PS5). Thought that was a banker.

@Gremio108 Played a chunk of Ronin myself and you're not wrong.

@Balaam_ The fact that we still don’t have a Dark Cloud 3.
Edit-Sorry, I thought the question was ‘What was the most unsurprising, expected, predictable thing PlayStation did in 2024?’

😊

Astro bot was a very nice surprise as im sure Sony said no major IPs this year - way to go Sony marketing!

Dragon Age Veilguard being such a good game was a nice surprise too - from early showings I wasn't really excited at all, but bought it after its review here. I would easily give it a higher score of 9/10, and its my 2nd place GOTY.

Pro wasnt a surprise as it was rumoured heavily and expected.
Its price wasn't really a surprise either - its a good enough price (not great, but calling it ludicrous is ridiculous!) - I think I was predicting a little less, but that was with 1Tb SSD.

Getting a Pro on launch day was a nice surprise as I was sure Sony would mess up with too few units as they did with PS5 launch - but they did really good here (then f'd up disk drive numbers.... but that hasnt affected me).
The number of games patched for or around launch was a nice surprise given PS4 Pro.

Concord failing wasn't a surprise, but the extent to which it failed was - with Sony refunding.

Finally, the loud minority hate campaigns/crusades against certain games that are trying their best to be inclusive, and optional consoles purely because of price, has not surprised me - but is saddening.
However, thankfully, it does appear that more and more people are starting to get fed up with this online 'hate crusade' behaviour.

Concord flopping doesn't make this a bad year for Sony at all. We've had Astro Bot, HellDivers 2, Horizon Remastered, Stellar Blade, Rise of the Ronin and FF7 ReBirth. The Pro released to decent sales, Xbox porting over their games with Indy and Outer Worlds 2 next year, and we've had a big improvement to the Portal with cloud streaming. The year was capped with Astro Bot winning game of the year and who knows maybe they can announce the acquisition of Kodokawa before the year ends.

2024 has been a good year.

@Blauwe_Chimay That game totally took me by surprise. Friends got it for me mor Christmas and I’ve been loving it!

@rjejr I'm finding it hard to believe that anyone clocked Astro Bot blind in 12 hours.

For me the surprises were:

• Asian devs carrying this year hard.
• PS Studios disappointing year, except for Astro.
• Half the industry still imploding (including Sony’s live service push cuz Concord and Bungie disaster).
• Microsoft’s effective killing of Xbox in pro of Microsoft Gaming.

The outer worlds 2 announcement that it's launching on PS5 also. Okami sequel in the works. Astro stealing my heart in a full blown game. Dragon age being pretty great.

What are some of your biggest PlayStation surprises from 2024?

Me : For me, BARBIE : PROJECT FRIENDSHIP on PS5 and other consoles was my biggest surprise.
The first Barbie game on PS5 by Outright Games, I was so happy because the fact there was a publisher which still want to release girlie franchise for kids like Barbie on powerful console PS5, it was really something special for me and also for other Barbie fans.

@rjejr I'm glad a fun for all game got the recognition it deserves, hopefully a turning point away from umpteen soulslikes, meteoidvanias, live service etc etc.

@Anti-Matter I have no words 🤣

@Jrs1
Well, I'm different here.
I don't play games like every users here.
I only play kids games even on PS5, with very very few rated Teen games like The Sims 4, FF X/X-2, FF XII TZA, Street Fighter games, etc.

@Anti-Matter Whatever floats your boat bud 👍

@MrPeanutbutterz Having played and loved Nioh, Wo Long etc, I can't get my head around the fact it isn't my favourite game ever

@Aaron Bayne, I'm gonna push back and say after The Game Awards announcement for the new faction in Hell Divers 2, they also released new content the same night. The amount of players who have been playing since then has skyrocketed to high numbers. A second wind has hit the servers.

I think the writing was absolutely on the wall with concord after seeing the cast. Not because of some dumb horses*** like DEI, "wokeness" or whatever but because the character designs were all INCREDIBLY bland in a game that's supposed to pull you in with its roster and also because the genre is just...dead, mostly.

You're either an established hero shooter or you sink like a rock. The only reason why Marvel Rivals is as popular as it seems to be is because IT IS MARVEL

silent hill 2 thank god

I’ve been a Team Asobi fan since The Playroom (which I played with my then very young daughters) and the latest Astrobot continues their trend of sweet, playful games which use tech in interesting ways. I’m not surprised them releasing a paid game aimed at a base console has turned out so well. As a big fan of the PlayStation portables coming across a Loco Roco stage while wearing a Kat suit (from Gravity Rush) hit me right in the feels.

The success of Helldivers 2 surprised me. I was a fan of the original game but I ‘only’ played it for a couple dozen hours. Helldivers 2 drew me in a lot deeper (I play two to three matches early in the morning before work and several on weekends and now have over 400 hours). The change in perspective makes everything a lot more visceral. I love the feel of the game and the hundreds of randoms I’ve played with have been overwhelmingly pleasant to play alongside. You and everybody else try not to make mistakes but you take them in stride because battlefields are often chaotic. I laughed out loud yesterday when in the middle of a pitched fight with a horde of zombies who had surrounded me on all sides I was suddenly flattened by the new jeep (driven by an understandably inexperienced driver trying to help me out). The zombies died and I lived (heavy armor FTW!) so it worked.

Another pleasant surprise for me was The Last Spell. I know it was on Xbox and PC long before and was even for PS a bit before I picked it up but I enjoy playing it. I must suck at it because I haven’t beaten it yet but it’s my second most played game this year behind Helldivers 2 in part because it’s very Portal friendly (in the afternoon I tend to be a second screen gamer and I tend to play games which allow me to quickly shift focus).
Speaking of which, the Portal becoming a hit was a surprise just because the entire internet seemed to hate the idea.

I had a tough time wrapping my head around Path of the Goddess when I saw the first trailer but the demo sold me on it and it’s one of my favorite games. So I’ll put it in the nice surprise category.

I could go on but suffice to say as a gamer it has been a great year.

The PS Studios game I had the most fun with this year was..... Concord.

Didn't play it, not even the beta. That whole spectacle unfolding was the single-most gripping narrative Sony has ever produced, and wholly unintentionally at that. I sat down with a 30 minute video of a guy clicking through the badly-written lore dumps with typoes in them (Firewalk cannot into spelling) to laugh at it, I watched the weekly cutscenes to laugh at them, and I look out for Youtube essays just to laugh some more ('The Absolute Chaos of Concord' is a good one). I signed the 'Re-release Concord, We Were All Busy That Week' petition. The Concord episode is the only bit of Secret Level I care about. I go to Taco Bell hoping it's a former Firewalk executive putting the fries in my bag.

Have to question Sony's business strategy of spunking 400 million smackers down the drain to give everyone this daring meta experience for free, but I thank them for trying something entirely new. Looking forward to the epic sequel next year, inexplicably called Fairgame$ rather than Concord 2.

The biggest shocking surprise is Sony still didn't cancel all other live services planned to release. Concord was the beginning.

@Gremio108 Played both of those, loved both of those (as well as most of Team Ninja's games over the years) and yeah, was surprised at how much I didn't enjoy Ronin.

@Anti-Matter when I read comments like yours I think it's cute that young kids are taking an interest in games and then I discover you're in your 40s and it feels different 🤣

An Astrobot game with not VR2 support.