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

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.

Ever since Microsoft announced it was buying Activision Blizzard it seems to have turned Sony crazy. I don’t know how much of an influence that was on the showcase (is that why Sony was holding things back?) but to me it seems that Sony has lost the plot. In fact, they’re on the cusp of making such big mistakes they could lose the generation.

Remember when the Xbox 360 was so far ahead in its generation and then it started losing the plot and wasting time with Kinect and all that rubbish? And then PlayStation 3 sneaked up behind and beat it. I can see exactly the same thing happening with this gen and these stupid live service games.

Why is Sony suddenly obsessed with them? It’s never had any success with them before, that would explain why you’d go all in with them. Nobody has really. Ubisoft tried this exact plan already and it’s been a spectacular failure, that’s left them in their worst position for years and ripe for acquisition themselves.

Nothing Sony has been doing lately gives me any confidence that they know what they’re doing and while Microsoft are great at missing an open goal, they’re going to have to put in a lot of effort to mess this one up. I’ve got both consoles, so I’m not necessarily rooting for one side or the other, I just want both of them to stop being stupid and start putting out some good games again.

Do you remember when console manufacturers used to do that? Nintendo does but I think Microsoft, and particularly Sony, have forgotten.

By reader Gantz

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