As the PlayStation 5 showcase ended, with aggressive price points for both the PS5 and its Digital Edition, a staggered release date (we get it a week later than the US, which is a shame but in the current circumstances I understand), and the announcement of Final Fantasy 16, the next God of War and, most exciting of all, a decent look at the wondrous Demon’s Souls running on PS5, I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing. Pumped, even.
And then, almost as quickly as the show ended, reality bit. In just a few tweets Geoff Keighley became a better Sony spokesperson than anyone on the company’s PR team, announcing that, actually, some of these fancy games we had thought were PS5 exclusives… weren’t.
First up, the revelation that Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which looked great running on PS5 during the show, is also coming to PlayStation 4. Huh.
Spider-Man: Miles Morales is coming to PS5 and PS4 this holiday. $49.99 pic.twitter.com/P5DvaEsqNI
— Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) September 16, 2020
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Then the biggest bombshell: Horizon: Forbidden West, Guerrilla’s hotly anticipated PS5 showcase, is also coming to PS4. Huh!
Horizon: Forbidden West will also ship for PlayStation 4 as well as PlayStation 5. pic.twitter.com/rvwexN10Bn
— Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) September 16, 2020
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Then a kerfuffle about Demon’s Souls, which, the PS5 showcase event told us, was not available on “other consoles” for a limited time, and was also available on PC. Did that mean it was set for PS4?
Remarkably, Sony pulled its trailer from the PlayStation YouTube channel, re-uploading it to remove mention of PC. This was “human error”, we were told.
Last night, there was a lot of human error flying around at Sony, wasn’t there?
PS5 Showcase Livestream REACTION + ANALYSIS – PlayStation 5 Games – EGX Digital 2020 Watch on YouTube
What happened to all Sony’s guff about believing in generations? It was a load of old rubbish, it seems. Whether you believe in Microsoft’s philosophy of launching its games across generations (I have concerns about the Xbox One holding games back, as I know some in the development community do), at least the company was honest about it.
Here’s what Sony’s Jim Ryan told our sister site GamesIndustry.biz in May:
“We have always said that we believe in generations. We believe that when you go to all the trouble of creating a next-gen console, that it should include features and benefits that the previous generation does not include. And that, in our view, people should make games that can make the most of those features.