Dear PlayStation: we don’t want your awful live service multiplayer games

Fairgame$ – it does seem to be a multiplayer shooter (Picture: Sony)

Another reader is unimpressed by the PlayStation Showcase and thinks Sony’s obsession with live service games is playing into Xbox’s hands.

There was a Reader’s Feature last week that suggested that the recent PlayStation Showcase would end up being a pivotal moment for this generation consoles and beyond. It seemed to get a lot of negativity from some commentors but I found myself largely agreeing with it. If it had been mildly positive then perhaps it would’ve been fairly quickly forgotten but any other outcome and I think its influence will be felt for a long time.

The outcome we got was certainly an odd one. It was all slickly presented, in that typical Sony fashion, but despite dozens of games and a 1+ hour runtime it never managed to show anything of interest beyond a few of the indie games. The way it started was just bizarre, not with a big new reveal but some awful live service game about robbing a bank. Or at least I assume that’s what it was, they never actually said and I can only assume by the fact that everyone was moving about in teams of three that it’s a shooter of some kind.

Then after that was… another team-based shooter. Except this one was ripping off Starship Troopers in the most blatant way possible. And apparently it’s a sequel to a game I’ve never heard of. Whoever decided to put Helldivers 2 in as the second game of the show: I admire your optimism, but you’re a madman. After that it was all downhill and then you started to get that sinking feeling, when you realise this isn’t going to be the massive reveal event you were hoping for.

When they rushed through the VR games in five minutes, and didn’t manage to announce a single new Sony title, I realised things were going really badly. I also realised that they still hadn’t shown The Last Of Us multiplayer game. Then when Spider-Man 2 was introduced as the last game I realised that, for no sane reason I can think of, they weren’t going to.

Rumours afterwards say Sony were purposefully holding some games back but for what purpose? If they unveil them after Xbox’s event in June then they’re going to look desperate, conniving, and stupid. I don’t think they will though. At this point it’s clear that this drip feed of information is the new way forward for PlayStation… and it sucks.

The strangest thing is they’ve now given Microsoft almost two weeks to prepare something that will outclass them. So they’ll be even bigger idiots than Sony if they don’t try to one-up them. All they’d have to do is unveil one or two first party games – maybe Fable and Avowed – and they’d have done it, because the bar has been set that low.

The reader’s feature does not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.

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