Talking Point: Did Sony Bring State of Play Back With a Bang?

Most of it was ok, you wouldn't be missing much if you didn't watch. But obviously the last 3 minutes turned it up a notch.

Happy that I can finally try MLB, Last of Us 2 looks great and Modern Warfare seems like the campaign will be good but other than those 3 not much for me.

I just watched it all live and for the life of me can't recall any mention of Batman. And I'm trying really hard. 😝

OK, go ahead and edit out Batman and change it to Humanity, but I know what I read.

It was oké i guess. The last of us part 2 was awesome but it was a little predictable.. Will download medi evil though! Was there something really new? I think N directs are still far better

It was great, swiftly-paced, no filler. Pretty much just pure game announcements for 20 minutes, and some great titles too.

Wattam, Humanity, Arise, The Death Stranding PS4 Pro bundle, bunch of new VR games, The drinking game with Satan looks very unique. Great announcement for the PS+ offerings as well.

I’m curious, is MLB 2019 the most recently-release non indie to ever get put on PS+?

I’m still trying to wrap my head around that The Last of Us: Part II trailer. Holy smokes.

Unimpressed. To be honest I would rather not have another one of these until after PS5 is shown. Maybe then they can be you know good?

I could tell it was bad when all I got excited about was a bloody demo.

it was okay.

tlou and medievil where the stand outs as expected.

regarding tlou it was great to see a clicker!
but man does joel look OLD. i know the world is a living hell for them and he was already middle aged in the first game but i did not expect him to look THIS battered.

PS plus games are 50/50. TLOU remastered is a fantastic addition but a sports game not so much imo.

all in all it's clear that we pushing towards the end of the generation for sure.

Nope. Humanity I didn't see, that hohokum looking thing and the Viking one have flop written all over them, civilization is not the type of game I play, after-party looks boring, cod looks ok, TLOU 2 looks amazing but then it's a day one anyway. I don't care for the special edition death stranding console, and the plus lineup is a total s%©¥show.

It was....fine? They need more oomph though, but that may be a by-product of the PS4 dying a long slow high profit death.

Also....can we talk about how the inbetween segments were visually exactly like a 2018 Nintendo Direct? Like it was dead on.

Wattam? Whats that? Batman? Yawn.
What else??? If those are the highlights them yeesh.
Though im dyyyiiing to see the tlou stuff!!!

Let's be honest here: it was too short and The Last of Us was the only really interesting part.

To be honest I only tuned in for TLoU2 news and it delivered on that front. Wattam and Medievil were nice bonuses

not to promote the competition but batman could be at the xbox stream.

it was what i expected it to be, but not really what i'd call "executives going all in" (or even remotely close). there's going to be little major news on first party stuff for the next 12 months, so for these to be a regular thing, there'll be a lot of scraping the barrel, so to speak.

TLoU2 continues to look visually impressive, and i'm sure it will be great, but all i really needed to know was the release date.. don't need to see any more of it. happy that it's going be early in 2020, rather than a later spring/early summer.

@Shepherd_Tallon Start saving. 😉

The Last of Us Feb 21
FF VII March 3rd

The only 2 ill buy on release anyway still have the Witcher 3 GOTY in seal. 😆

I thought it was at 11pm BST... but it doesn't look like I missed much.

Death Stranding and TLoU2 are being heavily pushed by Sony.

Underwhelming aside from Last of Us: Part II. I thought the last one was better, honestly.

It was a fine show, I think they just announced it too soon. With a five day notice, you just give people too much time to build up unreasonable expectations. I don’t why everyone keeps thinking Sony’s announcements have to be these huge show-stopping events, especially for small update vids like this, but that’s just where people are at right now.

I think the problem is that nothing of any real note is there to surprise the audience. Compare Nintendo Directs, which will use big announcements like Link's Awakening, Luigi's Mansion 3, the Xenoblade remake and Smash to bookend Directs.

It's weird, because many of Sony's E3 presentations have been these big, spectacular, audience pleasing affairs, but SoP presentations often seem like dumping grounds for VR games or stuff that otherwise doesn't generate much excitement.

As others have said, I think it being the end of the gen for Sony is the issue. They're inevitably saving ammunition for a full PS5 reveal, and, once that has occurred, we'll likely be getting much more interesting SoP presentations.

It was exactly the kind of thing people criticise them for. A series of indie games that look like PS+ fodder, a VR montage, then another trailer for a game we've known about for ages.

I agree with the points about how it'll be better when the PS5 is out, or more like in the few months leading up to its release. Another problem with it, though, is how it's presented like one of those things you used to get on cable TV channels that you weren't subscribed to, where it just constantly re-ran through trailers for programmes you could be watching if you paid for the channel. The presentation is so cheap and feels innately unspectacular, like it was knocked together by a film studies student.

By showing indie games? no. I want them back on the E3 stage. these shows won`t work for anyone, it doesn't even feel like I'm watching a videogame show. you want to be seen on TV? want to get the attention of gamers? reserve an E3 showcase like any other company will do.
P.S: about TLOU trailer, what was that? no, really? did I just get spoiled? now I know-how Dinna gonna die and where Joel will appear in-game. terrible trailer with terrible information.

I was actually surprised at how good Call Of Duty looked and The Last Of Us Part II looks violently fantastic.

Very poor. They should just stop showing these until they have something worthwhile to show.

It was okay, nothing mind blowing or anything. The Last of Us 2 looked good, bad news for some of the stuff sandwiched between that and Cyberpunk 2077. I was having second thoughts about getting FF7 Remake but definitely won't now. Good excuse for Push Square to dump out a dozen or so articles I suppose!

Well, i like this state of play, there was a bit of everything.
It's almost as if people always set their expectations too high and if they don't show what they want then they get dissapointed or angry because they didn't show what they wanted, and that's theirs fault.

It was underwhelming, nothing in it really got me excited or anything.

Don't know how you can talk this up to be any good? Of course I'm going to play last of us 2 and it's going to be good, but for some reason I can't get excited. The same goes for death Stranding.

Starting with whatever Humanity is, was a mistake.

If I wasn't so interested in any new TLOU2 footage and information there would literally be nothing for me with this state of play to be honest. I'm glad some people really like state of play, I like the fast flowing format of it but that's about it so far I thought the first one sucked and this was only better because of TLOU2 in my opinion. Super hyped for the last of us 2 though and was great to see how Joel looks now.

People like to forget that it took Nintendo a reasonably lengthy period of time to transform Directs into the absolute hype juggernauts they are now.

I agree with what a few of these comments have already said — it's the end of the generation for Sony, and it's saving itself for PS5. But at the same time, I don't think these livestreams are something you can master after just a few attempts.

Pretty meh tbh...

In comparison to the PS3 and Xbox 360, the PS4 and XB1 haven’t had half as much to play late cycle (or anything mid cycle in the XB1’s case). But then the XB1 and PS4 launched with very little worth playing because of this. You get the feeling the PS5 and XB2 will launch with far sturdier lineups as everyone holds their stuff back. The lack of games is also made worse by seeing how much is coming out on the Switch at the moment.

In conclusion: State of Play only worthwhile if they have enough stuff worth to discuss.

telling us about the MediEvil demo was nice but in all honesty the presentation was rather dull and i don't know about anyone else but i'm sick of seeing all these "artsy" indie titles all the time in these kind of things

still at least it was better than the latest Inside XBOX, i feel asleep during that one, it was far too long

For me the main problem is there has been been no major announcement from Sony for over a year. They haven't done a PSX or E3 in the past year and nothing at gamescom last major announcement was GoT and after last of us is out that's the only thing Sony have. Feels like Sony has limped through the last couple of years. I don't mind the state of plays think they would work better alongside Sony having a big show each year either E3 or PSX as on there own they seem very sparse.

Nope... Not for me. I won't play any of them (maybe Medievil, though I don't need the demo), so I found it a waste of my time.

@ShogunRok There is nothing to master. Experience wouldn't have made it any better. Games would and they don't have any to announce at the moment, so that's what we got.

@Quintumply I think the problem is that there's a kind of meta-narrative going on. It's good that the PS4 gets lots of indie games, Sony's strength has always been the wide range of games it gets on the PS, whether we're talking genre, budget, art styles etc. The problem is, when a lot of the video is smaller stuff, even though it's good PS4 is getting a good mix, it feels like padding due to a lack of more attention-grabbing things to show. Sony need to be aware that showing little clips of indie games, then capping it off with a look at a game we already know about, is going to be read into as a lack of an interesting line-up that'll appeal to a lot of people.

But then they do it 'cause of the other meta-narrative thing of having to focus on exclusives because, if you don't, people will say "omg they have no exclusives, PS4 sucks". I think there are lots of more interesting games that have a deeper appeal to various fanbases they could've shown, like the next Tales game, but it's not an exclusive. Pirate Warriors 4 or the Kakarot game would appeal to two huge anime fanbases, but they're not exclusives. Same goes for VR. They must realise the vast majority of PS4 owners won't care about LA Noire VR, but they also know people will criticise them for not showing anything interesting in VR.

Still, to put a cap on this wall of text, I think they should focus on a wider variety of non-exclusives outside of either the one big AAA FPS and a batch of indie stuff. Xenoverse 1 and 2 sold a combined 10 million copies (more in fact) so there's obviously a massive amount of people out there that'd be excited about a XV3 announcement but Sony would go for announcing a game where you, say, play as a strawberry trying to find your blackberry friend because it's a (probably timed) exclusive.

Still far away from Nintendo Direct

@AdamNovice a State of Play just for that? No, not really. A standalone less-spoilerish trailer would of been fine.

It was okay, I guess. Didn't contain anything of interest to me personally other than The Last Of Us 2 footage and release date.

The shows is good. It will be very good if there's ghost of tsushima or wild or new ape escape new trailer.

whiney people is that all some do on this site lol thought it was great showed some interesting stuff & the last of us 2 looked brillant! never played a baseball game before it looked really interesting to me.

Unbelievable!
If people carry on with this attitude we might end up with some insidePlayStation type of show like Haha
I say the format is good, the games are high quality.
Keep it up

@bindiana You are right they just release great games what a horrible company. 😉

Very poor for me. Last of Us Part II looks really good. But everything else is "blah". But I get it's coming to the end of the generation so wasn't expecting anything big.