PS5: The Future of Gaming

After months of rumors and speculation of an early June PS5 event, it has been officially announced that Sony will be holding the big reveal event on Thursday June 4. The event is titled the future of gaming so no need to worry about over hyping the event. 

On the PlayStation blog, Jim Ryan, President and CEO of SIE gives us a vague detailing of what can be expected. The only thing that the post says explicitly is that it will feature games. “I’m excited to share that we will soon give you a first look at the games you’ll be playing after PlayStation 5 launches this holiday. The games coming to PS5 represent the best in the industry from innovative studios that span the globe. Studios, both larger and smaller, those newer and those more established, all have been hard at work developing games that will showcase the potential of the hardware. 

He goes on to explain that The Future of Gaming will be the first of many events that are focused around the PS5 and that next weeks event will be a little longer than an hour which leads me to a few questions. What can we expect to see. Based on the Inside Xbox event that revealed the gameplay for the Series X. This episode of inside Xbox featured 13 games with what was called gameplay that lasted around 30 minutes. Based on this are we just going to extrapolate that data and assume we can expect to see around twice the amount of games that Xbox premiered. 

What I am expecting based on how Jim Ryan is phrasing his words is that these will be some serious game reveals based on the generally negative feedback that Microsoft received for their lackluster titles. I am also expecting that Sony saw what happened with how the consensus of the event was how little gameplay was actually displayed at the Xbox Series X event. Going back to the metaphor, This would be a perfect opportunity to Sony to build a bigger skyscraper by showing bigger games, better games, surprising reveals and actually show off actual gameplay similar to what was shown at the unreal engine 5 event. It also presents itself as the right spot to explain how these games take full advantage of the DualSense controller that was revealed a few months ago and why we need that in our lives. 

Everyone has been saying, myself included, that Sony has been dropping the ball when it comes to announcing the PS5 and not capturing attention. Mainly they have been staying silent but a lot of their silence seems like was forced upon them with covid-19. Timing is everything though as the last taste that we have been given of next gen was the milk toast inside Xbox. This means that Sony has a massive opportunity to catch up to, if not surpass all that Microsoft has been doing right with the proper reveal of stunning games and certain features. 

Some big picture questions arise from the post as well such as we will see what the system actually looks like. I would lean towards this being about a fifty/fifty. Microsoft has already shown off the Xbox Series X a while ago but with the post detailing how the event will be focused on games, it’s possible that Sony might want to save the box reveal for another big splash in the future.

How about the price? Will we see the price of the PS5? I would say the chances of this happening are very slim as both companies are at a stalemate when it comes to reveals and official announcements. You would always like the competitor to announce their price first so you have the opportunity to be aggressive with pricing. I think the other reason they won’t reveal pricing is due to covid-19 and how that has been affecting logistics. There was an earlier report this year about the increase in cost of the PS5 that pushed the cost upwards in the ballpark of 375. 

This leaves me with the final question of what we are likely to see keeping in mind the information we have. I would expect to see some strong first party exclusive announcements or reveals. Possibly get some small teasers of games like Elden Ring as that would make sense as FROMSOFTWARE games have typically been more featured on PlayStation. It would be a great time to announce some of the big launch titles which hopefully will include the sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn which is already over 3 years old and Guerilla Games should be closer to finished with what they are working on.

Finally, I think it would be an ideal time to announce that PS1, PS2, and PS3 games will be playable on the PS5. This would be a great feature to have on day one to help remove pressure from the launch lineup which might have been hindered from the global pandemic as development seems to be the sector of gaming that has taken the biggest hit.