Topic: Showcase 2023 Predictions & Rumours

This was... just don't do a showcase then.

They should have turned this into a Spider-Man State of Play, and release all the other trailers on the blog during the upcoming weeks and we all would've been "oh, that's nice" and maybe even remembered a few of them.

First, cinematic trailers for games. I have no clue what they're going to be just doesn't work anymore, or probably it never really worked. Especially when it's a cinematic trailer from a new studio for a new franchise. What do you expect me to feel?

Second, out of my top 5 of most hyped games from this showcase three of them were already announced. That's Dragon's Dogma, Assassin's Creed Mirage and Spider-Man - they did look very great might I add. And one of them was leaked all over the place, Metal Gear Solid 3, and it didn't have a decent trailer either. And then there's the only one great announcement, Talos Principle 2, which... you've guessed it: cinematic trailer.

And third, of course the question on everyone's lips, what are PlayStation's classic studios doing? It's not the fault of these new studios that I can't be excited for their game yet, I hardly know them. And it would've been no problem at all if one of them showed a cinematic trailer just to whet my appetite. If we just got a look at what Naughty Dog, Bluepoint, Bend, Santa Monica, Housemarque ot Team Asobi was working on. Sure, not all of them are close to releasing a game, but... really, some should. It's almost worrying.

They probably just shouldn't have bothered if none of their studios are ready to show anything. Just do a dedicated State of Play for Spider-Man 2 and leave it at that. I'm in the exact same state as before the 'showcase', in terms of games I'm looking forward to.
Hopefully there will be some good stuff to come in the other shows.

@CaptD 🤣 that’s a story for another day I’d imagine. Honestly though… what the hell were they thinking tonight, absolute clown-show

I already said most of what I had to say in the comments section for rating the Showcase, but bringing some of that in here. I thought it was poor. Only a handful of actual 1st party exclusives. Pretty much carried by 3rd party, but this was a Showcase, not a 3rd party State of Play. I'd be less critical of it if Sony hadn't been so silent about their 1st party studios output for so long, as there was a decent amount of good 3rd party titles shown, but that is not what should be expected from a PlayStation Showcase. For them to be so absent from their own Showcase is surprising, but also horrible.

From a 1st party perspective, I "left" the showcase with nothing new to be excited about from PlayStation Studios. No Stellar Blade trailer and release window either even though it was added to the database on the PS Store a few days ago.

Yes, the Spider-Man 2 trailer was good, but we already knew it was going to be good. No release date still. Once again, no Stellar Blade. Assassin's Creed Mirage and Alan Wake 2 looked great and we got release dates, but again, 3rd party. Why does their exclusive output have to be so secretive still even in it's 3rd year? This felt like a 3rd party State of Play, not a PlayStation Showcase.

I'm kind of speechless here. It's not a problem for me personally. The three consoles have more than enough games to keep me engaged until 2025, but it's nice to have a few of these big hitters to look forward to!

I thought it was... okay but overall was left underwhelmed as I was not surprised or outstanded by a great deal shown.

Squid Games new title was probably the one that had piqued my interest the most.

@colonelkilgore Clown show is about right, certainly not a showcase as most of the first party were missing which as I said in the main PushSq article is the one saving grace. This "showcase" was just a long state of play.
I think the problem is that Sony doesn't want to announce stuff too early whereas Xbox is the exact opposite announcing stuff way too many years in advanced, I think Sony needs to strike somewhere in the middle. I would be okay with a cgi trailer for that rumoured Naughty Dog (or is it Santa Monica) sci fi game, just something that is a new IP to look forward. I think the prospect of new IP is the most exciting thing especially as we are all concerned with this GAAS shizzle.

Having had a couple of hours to think on it. I thought it was an okay show but ultimately lacked the real hype moments we usually expect from Sony's shows, Metal Gear probably being the closest to bringing that "mic drop" moment with the way the trailer was presented.

As for Sony's exclusives...it's obvious why Spider-man and Helldivers were shown but I think Fairgame$ and Concord were shown because they are Sony's newest studios so I think they chose this moment as a sort of introduction. As for the reveals themselves, well I was kinda expecting something different from Haven, a lot of the talk from their interviews seem to suggest that they were making something a bit different. So I was a bit surprised that they are doing a Rainbow Six meets PayDay game.
As for Concord, I'm much more interested in it...largely because it's going for a vibrant Sci-Fi look and a team made up of ex Bungie devs should hopefully make it a fun shooter. But of course without actual gameplay or any kind of idea of what the game is you can't make too many conclusions.

Ultimately the show took on a similar approach to the last one in September 2021 where they had a couple of big announcements at the beginning then relied on 3rd party for most the show before finishing with big games from their studios at the end. Now last time they finished with GoW, Wolverine, Spider-man and Gran Turismo so the show ended strongly. But this time it was largely just Spider-man 2 gameplay and I don't think that was enough.
Hopefully Sony listen to the feedback and deliver a better show next time.

I'm also incredibly tired of cinematic trailers.

They're video games. I want to see what the games look like. A trailer without gameplay means nothing to me.

@Ralizah agreed, I said the same thing about the MK 1 trailer, since it didn't reveal any gameplay and got blasted in the MK subreddit.

Im not one theses people that hears live service games and automatically hate on them, but for the life of me I do not know why they are more than likely going to be releasing 4 or 5 live service games in one year, it's their own live services up against each other, makes no sense.

So having slept on it… I’m still just as disappointed. Don’t get me wrong Spider-man 2 looked incredible (far better than I was expecting in all honesty… a definite leap from the original and Miles Morales) but I stand by what I said last night, a Showcase should be a digital equivalent of a Sony E3 show… and that last night was definitely not.

The disappointing show together with the announcement that 60% of first party output will be GaaS actually leaves me concerned that the pivot from PS4 era Sony may end up being something I don’t like.

Exactly! ✊

I am astonished at how bad that Showcase was. I think that if Sony had intentionally tried to make a bad Showcase they would have struggled to do one as bad as that. Total misfire, conceptually flawed, badly paced - everything about it was wrong, aside from the fact that they showed off a few cool games.

@colonelkilgore Agreed, it is slightly worrying. There wasn’t much in the way of system sellers or exclusives. From what I can see there is at least 12 games last night also releasing on Xbox or other platforms. I’m in no way short of new experiences so I’ll try and keep optimistic still.

@AgentCooper yeah it’s not the end of the world as all of those first parties have to be working on something (right?) but I honestly think the PlayStation gamers deserve a roadmap of what they are up to and when they can be expected. I get that it’s a fine line as you don’t wanna announce something too soon… but I think not letting us know what is coming in 2024 (and even in 2025) is a mistake.

Death Stranding 2 and Factions 2 absence from the showcase makes them feel like a lock for Summer Game Fest given the Geoff connection. I could also see 1-2 PC ports of PS Studios games already on PS (e.g. Ghost of Tsushima, Demon's Souls, Rift Apart) given Sony used the Game Awards to showcase the last batch of PC ports (Returnal, TLoU Part 1).

Maybe something else appears as well but those are the ones I'm confident that they'll appear.

I think last night we were all given a bit of a reality check to the state of modern AAA development. Over the past 3 years Playstation Studios have released nearly 20 games and with development taken longer, the pandemic plus continued pushback on crunch culture it's perhaps not that surprising that most of their studios aren't as far along as we thought.
I do wonder if Sony were aware that they hadn't got much to show hence why Haven and Firewalk's games were revealed to not only introduce them to a bigger audience but to also fill out the 1st party showings.
Sadly I think it gave them a bad first impression, when you've got an audience that won't even look at these games just because they aren't single player then the best course of action is to impress with gameplay.

@Grumblevolcano Not criticizing you in the slightest as I think you may be right, but that's another thing to criticize Sony for. If they did truly hold stuff back for Summer Game Fest rather than show them during a PlayStation show that has the PlayStation name on it, that's just ridiculous and kind of goes to show that they really don't know what they are doing at the moment. I've actually been given that impression this whole generation so far, as they have been extremely successful so far in spite of their management. To still have no idea what the majority of their 1st party studios are making in the 3rd year of the PS5 is amazing, and not in a good way obviously.

@colonelkilgore A roadmap, exactly, which is why I mentioned showing a few (not many) cgi trailers. My main worry is with all the talk of remastered horizon, Last of us 3, horizon fortnite clone thing and generally all the gaas.
If they showed us that rumoured sci fi project then I think people (me) would worry less about the direction Sony is heading.

But above all is my concern for psvr2 as I thought that was the biggest letdown and is worrying for the future especially when this "showcase" was the time to come out guns blazing. Again a roadmap or some level of direction would have sufficed.