somnambulance

@TrollOfWar Yeah, the entire studio was dissolved, which is a total shame. The team only got to try their hand at two games. There were rumors for a while after that though that an Xbox release was imminent back in 2024. It must’ve been something that was discussed at one point, but just never done.

Honestly, I feel like Forspoken (and the Luminous engine) deserved better than what it got. Is it a perfect game? No. But it is what a lot of gamers say they want: a fresh IP with unique ideas with a different setting.

@PuppetMaster I think it’s too soon to really comment on whether it’s truly good or not, but it’s Naughty Dog, so hopefully it will be. People getting upset about the game with so little information about it though is silly.

Romeo is a Dead Man and Pokopia for sure. Due to the winter storm in my neck of the woods, I’m getting an extra day to my weekend. Hopefully I get the chance to get back to Requiem too. Honestly, 2026 has had a fantastic start with games.

@LogicStrikesAgain Even the way that it took forever to get Square representation in Astro Bot felt like there was a wrench in something. Hopefully they can get over this, whatever it is. Nintendo and Square patched things up, after all.

That said, I am sort of surprised Square didn’t try to get Forspoken a second life on Xbox and Switch. When the game went to PS+, it felt like opinions were far more positive than they were initially.

It took a while, but I’m glad Sony’s finally got a new third person cinematic action adventure IP on the way this generation.

This will be… the fourth Capcom game I will buy this year. Capcom deserves a trophy for their output this year.

@LogicStrikesAgain I sort of think that might be very accurate, though I don’t think a full acquisition was in the cards. I have a feeling Forspoken might’ve been a spot of contention between the two parties too. I could see Sony asking Square to make a game that directly appeals to Western audiences from Square and turning their back on it rather than support it. This generation, time and time again, we’ve seen such a lack of care from Sony if something doesn’t have immediate success. They wasted billions on Concord and closed it without trying to fix it, for example, even though it was allegedly one of Herman’s favorite projects. It doesn’t make sense. If you recall too, the narrative on FF16 flipped too. At first, Square was super happy with its attachment rate and then later they got frustrated. Could be more Sony than we know.

Why do we automatically expect this is Square’s fault? It’s apparent that something behind the scenes happened between Square and Sony. Square has very publicly stated its intentions to no longer make Sony exclusives, but why is it so public and why are they skipping games? That sounds like something is off. With the current leadership team at Sony, I could see them not valuing the historical context of Sony’s partnership with Square.

FF16 and Mana may be in development for S2, but incomplete. Nintendo may have asked them to prioritize FF7 ports, which seems reasonable, and Square found convenience in releasing them side by side with Xbox too. There’s logic there. I could see FF16 being more demanding than even Rebirth in some ways. Also, Mana’s team is disbanded and that game didn’t sell very well and received very minor praise. I can see Mana being skipped same with Forspoken, as Square wants to invest in games that will make more money and draw better praise.

Less than a week before launch, I still have no idea in the slightest if this game is for me.

@LifeGirl I disagree. It’s completely subjective whether or not games were ever better or worse. It ebbs and flows. In the last few years, we’ve had some of the most unadulterated classics in gaming history. We’ve had Elden Ring, we’ve had Breath of the Wild, we’ve had Red Dead Redemption, Death Stranding, Balatro, Hollow Knight, Astro Bot, UFO 50, several fantastic Final Fantasy and Resident Evil games, Baldur’s Gate 3, I didn’t like it as much as everyone else but Clair Obscur, the list goes on. We’ve also had bad games, but we’ve always had bad games too.

Realistically, people are getting far too upset about average tier live service games and giving them more attention than they deserve. In previous generations, we had the shovelware epidemic and before that we had games that couldn’t handle the fact that they were 3D and before that we had games that didn’t function properly and before that we had games that barely qualified as games at all. There were the Superman 64s, the Bubsys, the ETs. We had Tiger Electronics, for crying out loud. Tiger Electronics! Those machines were garbage! And we played them! You can’t tell me that Concord is worse than Mortal Kombat: Tiger Electronics edition.

Gaming is continuously evolving and changing. There will be good games, there will be bad games. In all genres, styles, and tastes. Yes, even live service games can be good. However, by prioritizing the toxic behavior of hoping games fail, this industry continues to diminish its ability to create and innovate without the expectation of criticism. This desire to hope games fail functions in the same way that creating games for shareholder value does: it limits the risk developers will be willing to put into their game at the pursuit of creating something they want to see in the world.

When we stifle creativity in a vacuum of judgement, it takes away the fun from development. The vitriol between toxic shareholders and toxic spectators will create a more risk averse industry that appeals to no one. People will not want to make games if they fear that game creation will either lead to stern financial expectations at best or ridicule AND stern financial expectations at worst.

Whether or not a franchise started 20 years ago or not is irrelevant as new teams with new ideas and innovations continue those IPs. We need to evolve past the pollution of hatred and move instead to support and celebration of the concepts we want to thrive in gaming.

Hopefully that site flops just like the games they want to flop do.

Anyone remember when people actually liked video games?

Hopefully the next game is just as weird, but perhaps more modern and polished.

@LifeGirl exactly. I’m firmly in a “right now, I don’t like what I’ve seen, but maybe I’ve not seen enough” kind of place. I’m in a “I don’t have a very strong feeling attached to the game” place too. And could get to a “I didn’t even realize the game came out” place if it doesn’t get much press! 😂

@LowDefAl That’s ignoring the fact that Requiem’s sales far exceeded Capcom’s expectations for the title in Japan and it reportedly sold out of physical copies and Nintendo doesn’t publish the digital data, so we’ve got some unknown variables currently. It very well could catch up on Switch 2 in the region.

Globally in the first week, the Switch 2 launch was a little more than half PS5’s sales, but still… the Switch 2 has been out less than a year and it got halfway to the PS5’s sales for the game. Would that 800k-1 million sales have shifted over to the 1.6 million PS5 or 2.3 million PC sales if a Switch 2 launch didn’t exist (or would they have contributed to the 300k on Xbox 😂)?

I do think Nintendo is starting to bite into Sony’s sales for higher profile games with the Switch 2 and it will continue as the Switch 2 install base grows and Japanese publishers are more aware of how sell through occurs with their stock and prepare more accordingly.

@Art_Vandelay I think they do contribute to it, or they definitely did for Concord. I remember playing the beta, and I knew most of my friends would probably actually like it, but they all refused to play it. Not because they said it looked bad, but because they didn’t want to potentially be interested in a game where the lobbies might shut down. That’s brainwashing point blank. I can see the effect of influencers in my own group, you know? If Concord would’ve launched without the impassioned community asking for it to fail, how would it have performed? I think had people not been so critical of it to start, it might’ve had a shot to do something slightly different. I mean, look at Forspoken, as an example of a game that was panned at launch, and had better community reception years after launch to the point where some people are admitting they might’ve been wrong about the game and it’s had a greater modicum of success as a game sold in sales rather than one that sold at launch.

Granted, I do believe Sony marketed the game extremely poorly too, and a huge part of the onus is on them for it not doing so well. It’s like they didn’t even try to get people interested or take any feedback from the beta. That’s throwing billions down the toilet. It makes no sense. It’s not like Concord had complaints over the gunplay or level design, but mostly over the fact that people didn’t like the character designs or another hero shooter when it launched.

Granted, I think Highguard would’ve failed either way, as it just wasn’t as well made a game.

I do think you’re probably right though that the live service market is stretched too thin right now and that’s prohibiting success for some titles, even if the gacha games seem to continue to be working somehow. Personally, I’d sort of like to have a multiplayer game I enjoyed, but it feels like that may not happen again. It’s been five years since I’ve been able to get hooked on one, practically the whole PS5 generation. There’s something that clearly isn’t working with the live service strategy this generation.

I wouldn’t say I’m in the hate category. Hate is too strong a word. I dislike what I’ve seen of the style of the game, but am following it because… well, it’s bonkers… so you never know how those types of games turn out. I’m one of those dopes that buys Suda51 games, after all.

Sony should try doing something really crazy like make games that appeal to their Japanese fanbase maybe. That could help too.

Do the Japanese view Sony as more Western minded at this point and that’s part of the problem? Surely it can’t help them that Capcom and Square are starting to give more support to other platforms at this point. Requiem and Pragmata launching day and date on Switch in particular probably hurts Sony.

@cainhurst94 I think you’re sort of right for what this game may end up being. I feel like it’s going to end up being a “better Ubisoft” for most, based on what I’ve seen.

We’re less than a week away from reviews (theoretically, as we only have confirmation that PC based review copies were sent thus far and the game is apparently massive). We’ll all know how we feel about this game soon enough (for some reason, I’m guessing this one’ll land at 85 on Meta with a diverse range of reviews with some praising what others hate about the game).

Definitely sketchy that the developer said the full game would be on disc before, but things change all the time in game development.

I have a feeling that something behind the scenes happened with them and Sony with regards to Final Fantasy, either 16 or Rebirth. I could see current day Sony snubbing Square after decades of partnerships post-Jim Ryan and Square being Square, they’re not taking it well. You’ve got to wonder if the lack of Square representation in Astro Bot was from Square or Sony.

In 2024, after completing Rebirth, for the longest time I felt like I was in a gaming wasteland and couldn’t click with any game. For like two months I struggled to find anything I enjoyed. On a flyer, I picked up the base game of Dave the Diver up and Balatro, thinking they’d both be side games for me while I waited for my next actual game.

Man, I totally was in the wrong with my logic.

Balatro ended up being my most played game in 2024 (if you don’t count the insanity of hours my son put into Astro Bot) and Dave the Diver was second. Both games ended up capturing my attention in a significant way. Even though Rebirth remained my GoTY pick for 2024, I never expected these games to get so much playtime and to be the actual “big games” for me. Then after those games, nothing was hitting those highs for me til Astro Bot came out.

Dave the Diver’s an incredible game. It’s immersive, relaxing, and totally unique, and I honestly can’t wait for more in the series. I still go back and play “a round” every once in a while. It’s one of those games I leave installed permanently on my console, along with things like Galaga, Megaman, Castlevania, and Flower (and yes Balatro too).

@ThomasHL interesting. I had no idea that happened. I was genuinely excited for the direction Overwatch seemed like it was heading. I owned the darn game on PS, Xbox, and Switch before it was free to play. Either way, it’s a shame that Overwatch never really moved forward in a meaningful way.

The worst part about live service games perhaps is that games sort of get stuck in a continuous loop of small updates rather than ever receiving meaningful iterative leaps. Though it sounds like Overwatch would’ve been on that trajectory regardless of if Kaplan stayed on…

I hope other games win lots of awards.

@ShogunRok I hope you all have been blessed with a review copy by now. I’m eager to read your thoughts… or the thoughts of whichever other staff member is reviewing.

@Art_Vandelay We agree quite a bit at the core of things. I myself am baffled by how Sony refuses to make games that are just plain fun a lot of the time. Astro Bot and Rift Apart excluded, this generation has been sort of a dreary one from everything made by Sony. It’s why some of us are asking for a new Uncharted so deliberately. Not that Sony needs more Uncharted specifically, but more games that are pure escapism. I like my sad dad genre quite a bit, but I don’t need everything to be sad dad tinged… or sad dad tinged with a message.

Even so, it feels like the hate has pushed us further into “the safe zone” of games and I truly feel there has to be another way than attempting to crash the games other people do want to play and enjoy.

I think we’re about to hit a point where the industry has a seismic shift for good or bad really soon.

@ThomasHL Honestly, that’s exactly what I personally wanted out of Overwatch 2 before it launched. I was sort of gutted when that mode was cut. Overwatch is definitely in my top 10 favorite multiplayer experiences, but, by the time 2 launched, about two weeks later, I sort of knew I’d probably never play Overwatch again. Greed ruined this game. Used to love Blizzard as a kid and young adult, but I can’t say I enjoy their output anymore. Activision ruined a lot of fun in gaming in their time.

Nope, but Sony’s been getting progressively less consumer friendly over the course of the generation and that definitely impacts how interested I’ll be in a next generation. I have no issue with dynamic pricing ifIf it’s designed to be unilaterally help consumers purchase something when supply outweighs the demand, but that’s such an intangibility in a digital marketplace, and I don’t for a second believe this practice is to bring customers in, but rather to sucker people to increase the size of their backlog as digital hoarding. While I’ve been digital for a long time and am certainly guilty of digital hoarding, the older I get, or perhaps the scummier corporations get, the more I’m understanding the value of physical media and how much less abstract the industry was when boxed copies sold was the strategy.

@Art_Vandelay I can’t say I disagree with you, but I also know that things have changed with what younger gaming consumers want as well, so there is a degree of logic to Sony’s pivot. However, this isn’t a Sony isolated event. Gamers across all platforms are engaging in this behavior. And it’s not isolated to live service games either. The hate brigade landed on Forspoken, and Starfield, and practically every game released last year, outside perhaps E33, a game that was largely celebrated by the people that tend to heckle gaming currently. The only property that has actually been too big to fail is Pokemon, which persists in spite of continual criticism when even Call of Duty was impacted heavily last year. If it were as simple as it being a push against live service games as well, Helldivers would not have launched as celebrated as it was either.

All that said though, Marathon’s a well made game, even if it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. It’s not for me even. The “yuck someone else’s yum” approach to gaming criticism though is widespread in the industry right now and, if anything, it seems to be creating more sequels and remasters and safe bets than actual innovation.

We’re in a bizarre point of gaming history where, by all accounts, the industry is more financially viable than ever, but there’s a contrast in opinion. It doesn’t line-up very cleanly. You’ve got to wonder if the consequences will actually affect console sales more in the next generation.

I literally only have PS+ for the Cloud Streaming for my son to play his Portal. Sony, as always, is so consumer friendly with how they make you pay to use your console and accessories… 😒

I’d cancel my PS+ in a heartbeat if it weren’t for that little guy. The things we do for our kids.

I’ve bought a lot of Sega games this generation, probably more this generation than any other if I’m being honest. I don’t have the Sega nostalgia many have, as I was a Nintendo kid until I was a Sony teen.

I’ve bought every Sonic game the last couple years, even though they’re of mixed quality. I also got Shinobi. Sonic Frontiers is probably my favorite Sega game the entire PS5 generation. Sega’s been doing relatively well on quality for me. They’re doing the whole Ubisoft thing from a generation or two ago of churning out a consistent stream of 7/10 and 8/10 tier titles in my eyes.

Outside that though, I’m sorry to say that Like a Dragon isn’t for me, so I don’t buy those games.

I also don’t click with Atlus games. I’ve tried in the past with them, but they’re just too long, I think. I got maybe 10 hours into Persona 5 and I bounced. I tried the demo for Metaphor and said, “Meh… just give me an anime of this story instead and I’ll watch it.” Atlus games are well made, but there’s just something that doesn’t click with me.

I’d be there day one for Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio though. I’ll get the next Virtua Fighter. Why doesn’t Sega make a new Phantasy Star or Panzer Dragoon game though. Seriously, I’d be down for those.

I’ll leave it on in the background. Future Games Show doesn’t tend to announce much that appeals to me, but, hey, I like Life is Strange, so I’ll watch for that to get some info.

@wildcat_kickz I totally agree with you. I liked everything about Marathon except for, you know… the extraction shooter gameplay loop, but I do find the game interesting and am keeping an eye on it in case other modes may pop up in the future that appeal more to my taste. No reason to get spiteful because I didn’t sync up with it, personally.

But I’ve also been fascinated by the hate culture all generation. It’s a PS5 era thing and it’s gotten out of control, but why is it happening? Some say it’s due to monetization, but if that were a pure answer, the simple solution is to not play the game. There’s something else going on here, especially as this same group is championing bad games from the past as great games, ie Cory in the House. I suppose you could say that some people want to watch the world burn, but I’m not sure it’s so simple.

I think there’s some legitimacy here. Granted, I buy everything at launch now and rarely anything on sale, so I’m not getting hurt like some are, but prices do seem to be higher on sales now than they were five years ago, even if you don’t factor inflation.

It CAN be transformative, but there’s so few games this generation that are such a visual showcase that I’d say it’s not anywhere near as valuable as art direction. There’s been very few games that have made me say “Wow” this generation because of their “graphics.” The rest of the games that have visually impressed me have been due to art direction.

The PS5 generation is, I think, the first generation where people are starting to question the value of “more power.” Every generation before has had several generational leaps, but this generation’s been basically QOL improvements. And it doesn’t help that the grand majority of games this generation either look like they would run on PS4 or DO run on PS4. People just want good games at this point, it feels like, rather than visual showcases.

I think part of it too is that the true demographic for gaming is getting older. Adults are buying consoles for themselves or for the whole family rather than adults buying them strictly for their kids. Unfortunately purchasing power seems more limited for a lot of families now too. Without substantial changes, I don’t see the interest being there for a next gen console right now, outside Xbox. And Xbox’s reason is more about optics and a reset than it is about actually wanting a new console. At the wrong price point, a new Xbox will tank worse than the Series.

I’d like to see their p&l spreadsheet. At least they aren’t reducing their cogs by eliminating staff right now.

Really crass way to announce this to your players.

I’m sure Sandfall withdrew because their lawyers told them they had no legal backing to sue and then their PR team scrambled to spin things in a less scummy way.

You know, it’s funny, the negative press for this slop is giving them more traction for now.

I’m expecting them to be shadow dropped at the next Xbox showcase at this point.

@EfYI This is why the industry shouldn’t heap so much praise on an individual game in a year no matter how good or successful it is. This team went from being “a scrappy underdog” to one of the most insufferable developers overnight. E33 may go down in history as the most overpraised game of all time. It’ll be interesting to see if the game was lighting in a bottle or if Sandfall will sustain their success.

It doesn’t always happen that the top 10 sales lists are all solid, but, man, that top 10 list gives me faith.

@ridiculous_ties Exactly this. Following Astro Bot, my kids can’t get enough of Ape Escape. I wish there was new content for my kids. Honestly, I wish there was more new family friend content on PlayStation in general. They’re sitting on Ape Escape, Parappa, Ratchet and Clank and many more. Even to some extent, they’re sitting on Astro Bot. I mean, make a darn cartoon for the character that basically functions as entertainment masquerading as legacy product placement for Sony’s best games of old.

I’ve said it elsewhere, but I feel like the industry is losing major segments of the population in how they’ve shifted towards appeasing the live service market and a more hardcore fanbase. The more casual market is being left behind. The kids market is being left behind. Smaller games cater to these people. I know my wife would take another Flower style game.

This will be an interesting game to follow. I anticipate it will do better than most live service games, but never hit expectations, which means we will see how Sony reacts to something that just exists rather than blowing up or fizzling out. I know such an average thing is sort of dull, but we’ve genuinely never seen this kind of thing with a live service title. It’ll tell us if a high profile live service needs to be a smash hit to survive or if Sony will continue operating something high profile even if it garners a probably minor net loss.

I honestly think it will largely depend on what Helix actually is. We don’t know anything about the console or if it’ll be genuine competition yet. I hope it’s genuine competition because, as nice as the PS5 is and as profitable as it is, this generation hasn’t exactly been as solid as I was hoping from first party Sony. It’s been a quantity over quality generation for third parties as they fill the gap for the glacial pace of first party releases, and it doesn’t exactly help that the first party games have been largely iterative and safe experiences.

That said though, some indies and third parties have backed away from Xbox. Xbox too has had a quantity over quality approach this generation. They’ve thus far struggled to produce many essential releases throughout the generation, despite releasing far more games than Sony. On top of that, the Series console iteration has had PR nightmare after PR nightmare, whether that’s from lack of games, flopping games, low sales, closing studios, mass layoffs, etc. Xbox has been backed into a corner. Even though the first party software is seeing potentially a better turnaround than what we’re seeing from Sony at the moment, far more damage has been done to the brand and its enabled Sony to stand above, for better and worse.

That said, if Xbox Helix gets announced and Team Green legitimately has a solid software line-up for launch with the reset of a new CEO (even though the work would’ve been done by the previous one), they’d be in a position to have a lot of positive talking points and they’d be able to capitalize on Sony’s current trend of being out of touch with their fanbase and largely doing a lot of the same things that caused Xbox to fail at the beginning of this generation.

Realistically, I think people want Xbox to succeed right now because a monopolistic Sony hasn’t made the industry many gamers want and honestly this generation there’s been some genre holes for the types of experiences people want. Some people want the next Uncharted or the next Skyrim or the next Halo and we aren’t seeing much in that capacity. Sony will only react though if Helix is worth reacting to. If Xbox launches an ultra-console without a software lineup with the selling point being that it has Steam and Epic stores while being double the cost of the last console, there’s nothing to see here.

Seems like rough luck for games announced this last Game Awards. Hope the project can land on its feet

Well, I’ve been playing Pokemon LeafGreen, and in the meantime Pokopia, Resident Evil Requiem, and Romeo is a Dead Man have stacked up. I’ve got Rubato and Life is Strange at the end of the month and potentially Crimson Desert adding depth to the pile soon. Then next month… Pragmata already preordered.

I’ll be honest, this is the worst I’ve been with keeping up with games in years, but hopefully I get some time to play because this is also the most exciting line-up I feel like I’ve had to play in a long time and I don’t think this year is going to let up for me. We’ve got another 2023 on our hands!

@GamingGod Honestly Northern_Munkey made… and so on and so forth. I was referencing a previous thread where I had discussed extraction shooters with him.

Personally, I’m not content to full on reject a genre without understanding things deeper. Northern_Munkey explained what makes extraction shooters tick to me in a way that helped me “get it” for what the appeal is, even if that appeal doesn’t appeal to me.

@GamingGod Honestly @Northern_munkey made a quite detailed explanation for what he liked about the game in response to me the other day and it helped me to realize this one isn’t for me. That said, I do hope they franchise it and make a single player campaign down the road some day. I’d love a co-op shooter in this art style.

For me, I wouldn’t say I found it particularly difficult, just that I don’t enjoy the gameplay loop of looting, basically. I’ve not played multiplayer games consistently in about half a decade now though, so perhaps my time in that sun has set. I will continue watching to see what Marathon does though. I’ve always enjoyed Bungie’s gunplay.

I wonder what Sony makes of these launch numbers. I sort of feel like Sony would’ve wanted them to be far higher than this, based on the Bungie investment.

While I know the article is trying to spin things positively, myself and most of my friends decided against getting Marathon AFTER the server slam when we were all intending on purchasing it before that and it seems other people on here feel the same way. Those people aren’t contributing to the review score numbers at all, you know?

I hope the game does well enough to be sustained, even if it wasn’t for me. Some people really seem to love it and I do like the art style quite a bit.

I wonder what will happen if the game continues to do relatively well, but remains under Sony’s projections. We’ve yet to see a live service title do just ok and be a little niche from any of these huge publishers. It’s usually a hit or a flop, so I wonder what the middle may yield…

@species I don’t disagree the characters in Concord were sort of generic, but again, I think that’s more Sony’s fault than anything else. After all, Sony marketed the game as a cinematic multiplayer game that would receive weekly cutscenes, but then didn’t do anything to introduce the characters before the beta. When the game had already landed a clunker of a beta, instead of trying to get people interested THEN they started introducing the characters in short segments. What were they thinking with that? It’s one of the most misguided marketing campaigns of anything I’d ever seen. It was impossible to like the characters because all anyone could do is say that it’s an Overwatch clone, but it didn’t have to be that way. It had different gameplay from Overwatch that was sort of like a blend between Overwatch and Destiny that could’ve gone somewhere if they worked it out a little bit more. If Sony read the room and pushed cinematic instead of live shooter, Concord might’ve had more of a shot. I think they learned their lesson a little bit because Marathon pivoted to a much more cinematic style of branding the last couple months.

I think Expedition 33 definitely had success because of marketing too though. It’s actually a great example of how good marketing works. They advertised it as a budget game, knowing full well that it was a full length RPG style game, earning them instant goodwill from the crowd that was upset with game price increases and then they got super lucky with Mario Kart announcing that it would be the first $80 release title. The comparison of price points landed right in their lap and spun Mario Kart out in a negative light that it still hasn’t escaped from. Xbox had been marketing E33 heavily as well, almost to the point that you’d be forgiven if you thought it was a first party game. In carefully articulated interviews, the team highlighted too how the game was deliberately focused on making a game similar to Final Fantasy of old with modern visuals and being ex-Ubisoft devs, they made populist jabs on how they’d be making something that wasn’t like Ubisoft at all in approach. It was a rather brilliant way to approach getting word out about the game. They knew what they were doing with their marketing and exactly which demographic of gamer they were marketing to. It’s exactly why the critical consensus loved it and why almost everyone and their mom played it, even though there’s many out there that don’t feel it’s the masterpiece it was made out to be.

Seriously, the biggest hits and misses the last five years have a lot to do with how they’re marketed and publisher response to criticism, definitely more than ever before.

@species Exactly why I’m being vocal about it too because I think there’s a complacency in the rage machine that’s become industry coverage. I liked that Pushsquare looked at Concord as a game without reputation and evaluated it in comparison to other titles that are similar, which is what I tried to do when playing it as well. It ultimately failed not because it was a bad game, but because it lacked support. I still find it baffling that Sony invested so much into it just to let it fizzle the way it did. Wild approach to game management. Personally, the lack of care towards it hurt my opinion of Sony, for sure, and I didn’t even love the game. I just thought it had potential.

Concord, in my opinion, was an interesting piece of gaming history, in that, some people reacted so strongly against it that it kept casuals from even trying it. It was a B tier hero shooter. Personally, I felt it was stronger than Apex at its foundation, but weaker than Overwatch. I could see what Sony saw in it to greenlight it and knew quite a few people that I knew would enjoy it. Most of them refused to play though because they were afraid to enjoy the game on the basis they feared the game would shut down. To me, this shows a Sony problem rather than a journalistic one. From every angle, Sony botched selling the game to its fanbase and allowed it to become a meme. It was quite strange to see Sony fail to defend their own massive investment in such a way.

The shame about gaming journalism is in 2026 that we’ve hit a point where even casuals need to research to see if a game is going to survive long enough for them to play it and the casuals tend to avoid games that review below 8/10, based on current market data. And yes, there is a lot of bias. I agree with that. When you look at Soulslikes, for example. They are almost always evaluated by someone that has a predilection towards that genre and that tends to create genre biased reviews. FromSoft, Atlus, and Larian tend to be protected by reviewing organizations, I believe. Not to say they don’t make great games, but there’s a tone of the fans reviewing their favorite games for them sometimes. First party titles tend to get the same treatment.