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The story
Sony’s new releases this year — Marathon, Saros, and Marvel Tokon — all scored in the 80s on Metacritic, yet threads on 5ch’s hardware/industry (“Geha”) board have been buzzing about how fast they’re fizzling out. A post claiming the fighting game Tokon’s peak concurrent player count had dropped to just four digits within ten days of launch drew particular attention, stoking worries about next year’s lineup as well.
What people said
Funny how you never hear any good buzz about them though. Are PS5 owners actually playing these?
Does the Metascore even matter if PlayStation owners aren't buying the games anyway? They only judge by whether it's free or not.
This is exactly why you can't trust Metacritic — especially for PlayStation games.
The game itself isn't bad.
The PSN account-linking requirement on Steam and the lack of optimization are the downsides.
Other than that it's just… not selling.
Those downsides are way too big to just brush off.
It's not just that it's not selling — the real problem is that day one was the peak, and the player count kept dropping all through the first weekend.
It's not terrible, but the systems feel way too rough compared to other fighting games.
People are also starting to suspect input-related bugs, so they should fix that along with the PC optimization.
Honestly, for a combo-heavy game, barely having working input buffering is a straight-up flaw.
https://krsw.5ch.io/test/read.cgi/ghard/1786862471/
Right now it's declining even faster than Marathon.
Marathon is just boring, but this game is unstable on top of being boring.
Seriously? lol
Wasn't it something about the anti-cheat being incredibly resource-heavy?
2027 has 'Granny 20,' 'Blackout Dawn 2,' 'Space Baldy,' and 'PC Bank Heist' lined up, you know?? (mocking nicknames for anticipated Sony titles)
Lol, next year's lineup is already toast too.
'Blackout Dawn' brings back memories.
It might be next year, but still…
It's Sony's Left 4 Dead knockoff, selling itself on having 'former Left 4 Dead staff involved.'
Already sounds doomed just from that.
Microsoft: "Forza Horizon 6😤"
Sony: "A-aaaaugh😭"
Lol
Looking at this, everyone but Sony has a strong first-party lineup this year lol
The PS5 is the only platform with basically nothing people are talking about this year.
What even is this.
I'd like to know how it stacks up against other bullet-hell shooters like Luna Abyss, but you don't see many comparisons out there……
Especially now that it's not such a rare genre anymore.
Haven't heard the name 'Yuke's' in a while. (Japanese developer known for wrestling games)
Well… it's a company that makes Smash Bros knockoffs…
So yeah, what did you expect.
That's because Square Enix and Capcom ran off to the Switch 2.
Background and Key Points
Sony’s PlayStation Studios is a first-party portfolio (Naughty Dog, Insomniac, Sucker Punch, plus smaller acquired studios like Bungie and Firewalk) that historically leaned on tentpole single-player releases and, since the 2010s, an increasing bet on live-service titles. “Special Lineup” (スペシャルラインナップ) is the marketing banner Sony puts on select PS5 titles for pre-order bonuses and promotion; posters treat inclusion in it as an ill omen because prior recipients (including the shut-down live-service game Concord, referenced sarcastically in the thread) flopped commercially despite the push. Metacritic aggregates critic reviews into a 0-100 score and is widely used in Japan as shorthand for a game’s quality, but it says nothing about sales or ongoing player counts — which is precisely the gap the thread is arguing about.
The split in the thread isn’t over whether these games are struggling — everyone agrees Marathon, Saros, and Tokon are underperforming. It’s over whether Metacritic scores in the 80s mean anything at all, given that praise doesn’t seem to be translating into buzz or players. Some posters extend that skepticism into naming specific culprits for Tokon (PSN account-linking on Steam, poor PC optimization, possible input-buffer bugs), while others just wave it off as evidence Metacritic “can’t be trusted” for PlayStation titles.
What readers unfamiliar with the Japanese context might miss is that “Geha” board cynicism toward Sony first-party output has hardened over several years of high-profile live-service cancellations (Concord being the most infamous), so the reflexive “they’re doing this on purpose” jokes reflect accumulated distrust rather than fresh analysis of these three specific games. The thread also never engages with whether Steam concurrent-player figures (the “four digits” cited for Tokon) are even a fair proxy for PS5 sales, since PlayStation platform-specific numbers aren’t public.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (“Geha”)) thread “This Year’s Sony Games: ‘Marathon, Saros, Marvel Tokon, Wolverine (planned)’ — Yeah, This.”
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