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LurkerJ on 04 July 2021
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VAMatt said:

I disagree with one of the basic premises here - that Sony has taken particular risk with their first party lineup.

Sony has released quite a few great games in the last several years. But, I see no more risk-taking than Microsoft or Nintendo, or even some of the big third-party publishers. That's not to say that they're taking no risk. It's just not outside of the norm for the industry. Everybody tries some new stuff, evolves their existing franchises in different ways, and the like. And, everybody relies in large part on their existing big series'. Sony is no different.

The only difference lately is that Sony has cranked out a string of great games. That's good, and they deserve high praise for that. But, let's not pretend it's an act of bravery. They're just doing what the industry has always done, and they've managed to get it right a lot more often than not, recently.

No one takes more risk and has been more innovative than Nintendo: the Switch is the most genius home-console made in decades. Fact. And not long ago, Nintendo changed the direction of the industry with the Wii and the copycats followed. Impressive for a company with wallets no where as deep as SONY's, let alone MS. 

With that said, comparing SONY's efforts to MS is flat out laughable to be honest. You don't have go all out praising SONY, but credits where credit is due. SONY defines the single-player games driven by stories. They set the standards for what a story-driven game is going to be like every few years, that's hardly "what everyone else is doing". Don't believe me? Ask MS.

Moreover, SONY is actively trying to push the gaming medium in the VR direction, their attempts so far have mediocre but they continue to invest and learn. MS, as always, stands on the sideline and to copy the next successful endeavour, it's the philosophy that most of the company runs by anyway, not just their gaming division. They couldn't even come up with something like the DualSense.

Also, saying that SONY relies on their existing big series' is false. The PlayStation brand was a poorly run business until very recently, and had no legacy besides being the default console for third parties (even when SONY was a literal dick with the PS3 lol), it's one of the reasons the PS3 did so poorly initially, SONY had nothing to fall back on from the previous 2 generation. In fact, the only two "big series" that you can trace back to the PS1/PS2 era (GOW & GT), every other IP is fresh or relatively fresh, the fact that they now have many IPs to rely on is a testament to how impressively quick they're working on new IPs, which is inherently risky. If they maintain this performance during the PS5 era, they'll end up with creating more "big series" and the PS brand, for once, will have pillars to stand on and weather the storms MS throws their way. The way Nintendo have weathered and will continue to weather every storm MS&SONY threw their way.