A US IGN opinion piece points to the Metacritic score of Insomniac Games’ new release, ‘Marvel’s Wolverine,’ dropping below 80 as evidence that “PlayStation’s future has never looked bleaker.” The piece is written by a longtime admirer of Sony’s story-focused, single-player-driven approach, and comes against a backdrop of headwinds for the PlayStation camp — including the early shutdown of the competitive shooter ‘Concord,’ studio restructuring, and the end of Sony’s partnership with Hideo Kojima. On 5ch’s Hardware & Industry (Geha) board, reactions split between those agreeing with the assessment and those pushing back by pointing to Sony’s strong financial results.
PlayStation’s Future Has Never Looked Bleaker (PlayStation’s future has never looked more clouded over.)
It’s hard to imagine how PlayStation leadership felt watching so many critics shrug with indifference and walk away from Insomniac’s ‘Wolverine.’
A Metacritic score under 80 is, as anyone in the AAA space knows, considered a “disaster.” It surely isn’t fun for Sony either, but for a company its size, it would be easy enough to write off as “an uncharacteristic one-off mistake.”
Source: ign.com / Read the original article here
Lol, that disclaimer
Wait, does that mean he's secretly turned into a hater!?
Yeah, if you're a PS fan who genuinely loves Sony's story-driven single-player games, of course you'd want to complain once Insomniac goes downhill and Sony cuts PSYSINT loose too.
Actually, if you read the back half of the article, the writer sounds pretty disappointed that cutting ties with Kojima means no new game from him either.
Sony's Hermen Hulst said so himself, so it must be true.
It's hilarious that the head of the software division actually said that once before and then followed through on it for real.
Let's be honest, they're done for.
– Marathon
– Saros
– Marvel Tōkon
– Wolverine
They're putting out so many games, so why…😭
It's almost impressive that they're all duds.
I guess every one of Sony's indebted vassals (game journalists beholden to PlayStation) is now getting purged.
But is there really any outlet out there that could write something favorable about PlayStation after this nonstop streak of bad news in such a short span?
And SIE keeps making nothing but bad moves on their end too.
'Due to strong performance,' service shutdown.
'Due to strong performance,' layoffs.
'Due to strong performance,' studio closure.
Honestly, that's the only explanation that makes sense.
Well, in the end that's about the level IGN operates at anyway.
Resident Evil, Wilds, Elden Ring, Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, even Persona — all going multiplatform to Switch 2.
Fellow company loyalist Harada got the axe, and Nagoshi's studio got shut down.
In the end, Kojima Productions was the only one left standing — and then there were none.
Game media never bothered learning any game philosophy and just kept heaping praise purely because the graphics kept improving, so Sony has been living under that delusion
for 20 years straight.
Even now, the top criterion for GOTY is basically 'big-budget with good graphics,' right?
That's exactly why I'm calling you all shallow.
I think they noticed their graphical edge was hitting a wall, so they turned to political-correctness pandering instead.
If you understand that much, how do you not get that Sony was pulling the strings the whole time by keeping the game media in its pocket?
What's even stranger is that even though their own earnings look great, you never hear anything good coming out of their affiliated companies, and more and more of them keep pulling away from PlayStation.
Where are those numbers even really coming from?
That's because PlayStation basically equals Japanese third-party publishers —
foreign developers and foreign studios are just a bonus on the side.
Xbox fanboys aren't Japanese, so they desperately trash Sony's Western-style games,
but honestly nobody here cares, and domestically Onimusha would outsell them anyway lol.
They rag on whatever random Sony title, or get smug over Kojima acting all Western-wannabe lol.
PS users only care about Japanese third-party titles — that's the only thing the earnings actually reflect.
God of War has also become a stale, formulaic series.
Insomniac took a hit with Wolverine. Guerrilla is lost in the woods.
Naughty Dog, show us the space game already, come onnnnn!
Don't worry, Marathon is doing so well it's still going strong — it'll all work out. (sarcasm)
Those are just extras anyway, right?
Western-style games are just there to troll Xbox owners lol
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
This piece is an opinion column by IGN writer Matt Purslow, sparked directly by Insomniac Games’ new release ‘Marvel’s Wolverine’ dropping below 80 on Metacritic — a score range widely considered a “disaster” for a AAA title by the industry’s own standards. The backdrop includes several years of news around Sony’s first-party studios: the early end of the competitive shooter ‘Concord,’ the dissolution of development studio PSYSINT, and the end of Sony’s partnership with Hideo Kojima. Where the thread splits is over whether this “bleak future” narrative squares with Sony’s own financial results, which look strong on paper. Some posters suggested that “domestic third-party software is what’s propping up the earnings,” but it’s worth flagging for readers that this is speculation within the thread, not a figure backed by the article or any official filings.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware & Industry / Geha) thread “[Bad News] IGN itself: “PlayStation’s future has never looked bleaker”.”
