Terrible presentation for me, the worst I've seen Sony doing. No game I'm inclined to play

I fell asleep when they were showing Split fiction lol. I'll watch it later but it must have been very non entertaining.

PlayStation hasn't had an interesting showcase in a long time. That's why I totally dropped the brand. I'm over these colorless, ultra-realistic, repetitive games. Even these Chinese games, supposed to be something fresh for the industry, are just generic games with hot girls. I'll never forget the day I saw the opening FMV for Chrono Cross on the PS1 at a cousin's house. To think my SNES RPGs now looked like that was mindblowing. That's when I fell in love with the brand, up until the PS4. Now I'm done.
Luckily, I've always been much more of a Nintendo fanboy, and stuck with them since the beginning, and never got disappointed (maybe a little with the Wiis).

I think you hit the nail on the head. Every game's combat looks the same, the themes are always the same, the colour palette just feels like the PS3 generation but with the contrast turned up and the protagonist is always either a "cool dude" or a "hot girl". I think that's why the Konami octopus game stood out so much; it was one of the only things there not overly serious and (apparently) with a hint of creativity.

That's pretty much what State of Plays usually have been. Usually they're third party stuff, with maybe some small first party stuff - like a PC port. A few have been exclusively third party stuff.

That's generally why people have been pushing for "Showcases" specifically, because that has generally meant first party stuff.

There seems to be a shift in strategy this past year though, Saros would have been a showcase thing. Astro Bot was at a State of Play. Ghost of Yotei was at one. 

I would also point out, that Sony doesn't put out monthly games like Nintendo does; so it's a lot harder for them to have good frequent shows based on their published content. 2023, their PS5 lineup was basically Spider-Man, 2 VR titles, and their yearly update of MLB The Show. Nintendo published 13 new games that year, and it feels generous to say that Sony published 4. 

Yep, hopefully Sony figures out their stuff. 

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Sony purposedly waited for the day after the State of Play to announce 5 new free levels for their last GOTY winner.

Wtf is wrong with the people working on their marketing team.

I would give the SoP a C overall.

It was nice to have a confirmed release date for MGS 3 remake as well as the new trailer for the new Onimusha.

Other games I'm really looking forward to would be
The new Shinobi (art direction and combat look phenomenal)
Darwin's Paradox (looks like an incredibly charming puzzle platformer)
The Sonic Racing game looks like a lot of fun and something I know my daughter will love. She's on a huge Sonic franchise high right now lol

Saros could be interesting that I'll check out when gameplay is shown off. Overall, underwhelming. 2025 is shaping up to be more of a restful year for my PS5 lol.

Saros was interesting. There are 2 possibilities: Good game or Meh game. The rest was hm... medium i suppose? Nothing special but also nothing catastrophic...

At this point I think GTA6 is holding the industry hostage. 

Sony is going to wait to announce release dates for a game like GoY, and even hold off on additional announcements for later in the year, as they don't want any of their games to be cannibalized. 

Not ground breaking but deffinitly not underwhelming! Saros alone prevents it from that. Yes their generation was weak and it was not a Nintendo Direct but the show was not that bad. We had some interesting multiplats as well like Sonic Racing Cross Worlds what actually reminds me of Rachet And Clank Rift Apart because of this fast changing worlds, wich also finally contradicts this old theory that you need an SSD for this fast level changes without loading times. According to this theory the PS4, Switch and Xbox One should not be able to run the game...