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The story
Sony’s game-news program “State of Play” got torn apart on an overseas forum, and the post ripping into it racked up 300,000 likes, turning it into a hot topic. Viewers repeatedly called out two things: the opening, which aired live-action movie footage with no warning and led some to mistake it for actual gameplay, and the sheer length of the developer and voice-actor interviews. Over on 5ch’s hardware/industry (“console war”) board, discussion turned to whether Nintendo’s upcoming “Nintendo Direct” — airing around the same time — would fall into the same trap, with opinions split especially over how it might handle movie-related info tied to Zelda’s 40th anniversary.
What people said
It's a 2-hour epic, so buckle up and get through it
Two hours, but the content's about doujin-circle level 🥺 (doujin = amateur indie creator scene)
Two hours? At that point it's basically a movie
・Show at least one new game
・Don't open with "Looks like movie footage, right? Because it is!"
・Don't spend dozens of minutes on developer interviews
Apparently that's all it'd take to beat State of Play
So if they open Direct with Zelda movie footage, that's an automatic loss for Nintendo, right?
I can totally see them pulling the "looks like a movie, right? Because it is!" bit with new Zelda footage too
Idiot! You forgot the voice-actor segment!
Saving that for the grand finale is the bare minimum requirement
If anything it's getting slammed harder than in Japan, where it barely registered either way
Well, nobody in Japan even knows about it 🙂
Yeah, you'd think they'd at least give an update on Space Baldy
Even then that only gets them a step closer to even
On top of that, they'd need to run 2 hours with zero new games to get anywhere near equal
The bar for "losing" is set way too high 😭
Lol, of course they'd copy the lamest part
If so, I could totally see Zelda Direct doing the same
They just roll the footage with zero explanation
↓
Some clueless fan (the post uses a derogatory 5ch slang term for gullible viewers) goes "Whoa, PS5 is insane! Looks just like live-action!"
↓
Turns out it WAS a live-action movie
That's the whole bit
If it were a movie based on their own IP, sure, that'd make sense, but Sony doing this on a PlayStation show makes zero sense
That's exactly why nobody saw it coming and mistook it for gameplay
If Capcom did it, I'd get it
Ah… true
There's no way left for them to lose, is there…
Just when the insanely long interview ended and I thought they'd finally get back to showing games, another interview started right up again — thought I was losing my mind
And on top of that, no actual Resident Evil game news either?
Honestly surprised they showed the RE movie but didn't drop any news on Veronica
After all the mockery they threw at State of Play over the movie thing
Wait, what? What do you mean? Explain?
Everyone, let's hear ID:FDoM3si40's explanation!
It's a Direct for Zelda's 40th anniversary, of course there's going to be movie info
Are you stupid?
Guess you can't win unless you set an impossible win condition
vs
The 10-minute voice-actor interview segment
Wasn't the previous one worse?
That just means State of Play has flat-out stopped being a game broadcast
Hardly any game fans actually want to sit through developer interviews
↓
So they swapped them for voice-actor interviews ☆
Stop putting effort into the wrong things 😡
Is this some kind of riddle? (tonchi — a clever wordplay trick)
Padding it out with talk makes the show easier to put together
Whether it's to pad the production budget or just eat up PS users' time, who knows, but State of Play's runtime is set way too long
Just have them do narration only, like Nakamura
Nobody wants to watch that
Thought there'd be something new, but it was just a recap
Background and key points of this discussion
“State of Play” is Sony’s irregularly scheduled broadcast for announcing PlayStation news, while “Nintendo Direct” is Nintendo’s equivalent program. What drew criticism this time was a segment structured to make viewers think they were watching gameplay footage, only for it to be revealed a while later as live-action movie footage (reportedly tied to Resident Evil) — a move many viewers saw as “dishonest.” Meanwhile, within the thread, some pointed out that Nintendo also inserts lengthy developer interview segments, so this isn’t simply a case of one show being categorically better than the other; the real point of contention was a difference in presentational honesty — namely, whether it’s made clear upfront that the footage is from a movie. The split opinions over featuring voice actors front and center also reflect differing viewer preferences on how these shows should be put together.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (Console War)) thread “Foreigner: “Sony just lowered the bar for Nintendo Direct with the worst State of Play ever” → 300k likes“.
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