PS5's First Commercial in China Is All About Bringing Stories to Life

As long as the stories fulfil the official checklists, guidance and requirements.

Yeah well thats a lie 😂

Well isn't that ironic 😂

@icomma I lived in China for a year and 9/10 of my students were seriously addicted to LoL. It was their only hobby and the only thing they talked about (both male and female students). I don't agree at all with how authoritarian China is, but something had to be done.

While I'm excited about connections with talented Chinese Dev teams, I'm much less so about the inevitable censorship and threats from the CCP that comes with the increased interaction.

Sony's 1st party releases will likely all be affected in some way or another. Would they really wanna miss out on such a market?

"Story in a game is like story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but its not that important" - John Carmack

Wonder how our friends at the CCP would react to certain parts of TLOU2. Not entirely favourable, I'd imagine.

@Max_the_German Only if you want your audience to stay just as narrow and homogeneous as the audience for most porn.

@nofriendo well said.

"Here at PlayStation, we love storytelling and all kinds of unique voices....

...unless they portray the Chinese government as a brutal, authoritarian dictatorship. We can't have that."

Also, Taiwan is a country.

Been salivating for Black Myth ever since that first video.

For the most part, it brightens my day to see so many people on these forums aware of exactly what China is and represents. Kuddos to a majority of you.

@PrinceAmir There's a severe difference in being in a war with other countries and slaughtering your own people so don't give me that crap. Oh... and you obviously have no idea what our s**t media says here in America. They bow before China... essentially being their propaganda arm. Perhaps you're the one in the woke cult.

Sony: "Play has no limits"
CCP: Yeah about that...

Here is a story to bring to life before the PS6 comes out: get some PS5 stocks in Europe (specifically France because I'm selfish)

China - beautiful country, nice people.
CCP - bunch of international gangsters and liars who seem to believe there own propaganda. President Xi has invoked a cult of personality over there. I really hope they don't invade or attack Taiwan as I've been there and it's a wonderful place, really shows what China could be like if it opened up and was democratic.
Instead it's secret police, disappearances for 're-education', concentration camps...scary totalitarian stuff, seems like a good backdrop for a videogame..oh wait.

Finally, I wonder what 'incentive' that poor Peng Shuai was made to change her story? I doubt she will ever be allowed to play tennis abroad again.

@sincePS1 China has no limits either going by their activities in the South Chinese Sea. Xi Jing Pooh wants it all.

My PS5 collection needs a good F.I.S.Ting but disc copies are hard to come by in UK.

@Rhaoulos I've had one sitting on my shelf since January. They aren't non existent in France and the UK

@thefourfoldroot this is funny because i don't see a lot of censorship in things like the last of us 2, you are talking about western "otakus" crying over sexuality in anime characters and that's ... yeah.

As always readers, we respect and understand that this website does not exist in a bubble. But when we post about a Chinese game or a PS5 commercial, we're doing so with the intention of focusing on PlayStation rather than politics of the country in question.

Again, we're aware there's a tightrope to be walked, and everything circles back to politics eventually. But if this is the kind of discussion that a harmless post about a commercial prompts, then we'll seriously have to consider whether we even cover these kind of stories anymore.

@Max_the_German did he really say that? What a quote

@naruball It may be at thing because its the only place where you had some kind of freedom.

@PushSquare
I agree. Jeez can’t people relax and be non political for a minute?
Push articles arent meant for that sort of discussion or virtue signalling.
I’m for freedom of expression all the way but maybe better on forum right?

I bet they keep the secret browser proper secret!

The problem of Sony pushing, and pushing their story focused games in China is, like with Hollywood and China (or like Hollywood and the Nazis in WWII) that means they're going to tailor their content to fit the Chinese government's demands and expectations. Hollywood in the 40's recast Jewish actors and rewrite stories to not touch on sensitivities of the Nazis so they could sell to key markets under Nazi control. Hollywood today designs most of their films to be neutral and safe for Chinese censors, utilizes Chinese government input for story design (many films are more or less reskins on existing Chinese fables because that's safe and easily approved), caves to including Chinese film crews or locations in shooting for appeasement. It also means films must be uninteresting, generic, homogeneous, and must never every Challenge the established way of thinking or viewpoint of the CCP else it risks losing sales in that market.

That's just the defacto norm in film now, and this means it is officially the defacto norm for PlayStation Studios as well. Their stories may be "fun" and their stories also must be safe and generic, never touch on the "wrong" parts of a dictatorship (and ideally should present facets authoritarianism as good for public safety), and bonus points for one that paints Western ideas as bad, destructive, or excess.

I guess Second Son 2 is definitely out of the equation now....

@NEStalgia So is MediEvil 3. I guess TLOU won't release over there either, nor God of War. Makes me wonder if they're simply not releasing most of their contect over there, if they're going to censor it, or if they're going to censor stuff forward for everyone.

@JJ2 right? I think even if China did “open its eyes” regarding wokeness it’d take a serious influx of all the worlds vagrants to put so much as a dent in their population, hah. Can’t wait for Black Myth!

@Octane Yeah.... I think most of their current content developed (or in development) before they opened their doors in China will simply not be released there. But new games that are in the post-PSoC era will have to be developed with Chinese censorship in mind from the start, so it's going to affect the games all of us get, and all of them will be dumbed into the insipid superhero and cheap-feel-good nonsense Hollywood has been cranking out for the last 15 years. Insomniac is no doubt a massive piece of that puzzle as the new Disney factory sweatshop. After all why spend $100-$200M on a new big budget blockbuster if you can't sell it in the world's largest market after you just entered it?

I'm guessing this leads to an era of really high budget, pretty looking games, with interesting gameplay and insipidly bland worlds, characters, and stories, that subtlety shame the West for being Western and celebrate the need for strong leaders that make "hard decisions" for the good of their people.

Meanwhile Tencent will continue consolidating the rest of the industry and the technologies that hold it up to synergize their global reach in empowering creators to bring content that "improves the way people think about China" so we can play them on our consoles made in China, on games printed in China, downloaded over our routers made in China from telco switching equipment made in China.

So far their efforts with China has been slightly improving with the likes of FIST, Hardcore Mecha and Lost Soul Aside. Still a shame about what happened with Monkey King hero is back though, especially considering how that game was marketed in China, only for it to fall into obscurity. I'm pretty sure it's the last chinese game Sony Asia has made as of late. Kinda why I wished Sony just bought TiGames or even the Hardcore Mecha devs so that they can develop some good chinese first party titles.

@PushSquare Fair enough. Maybe people need to bing chill a bit.

@thefourfoldroot Laid back atmosphere? Have you read the comments here lately 😹👍

@Amusei
Every day lol. Compared to cesspools like Eurogamer for example, this is chill. It’s all relative of course.

@thefourfoldroot Yeah I guess it's alright. This is the only gaming news site I follow outside of Reddit.

@PushSquare Yikes, it's incredibly (almost unbelievebly) optimistic to hope that people are going to just discuss the merits of the video on such a hot topic as this.

Virtue signal while being in bed with the CCP, Sony are just the same as any other big corporation here in the west. They go where the money is and nothing else matters.