XSX vs PS5

[Potato]

Apologies for the Kotaku link, but article contains no complaining about any -isms or -phobias at all. 

https://www.kotaku.com.au/2024/09/astro-bot-is-an-incredible-reminder-that-the-ps5-era-has-been-a-huge-bummer/

But it’s been four years since the PS5 launched with Astro’s Playroom installed and the new game also inadvertently spotlights the fact that, despite four trips around the sun, the system has remarkably little to show for it.

But after finding a couple hundred, I realized something was off. By my count, I’ve only encountered one that originates from a PlayStation 5 exclusive in those 250: Rivet from Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. But I look at a list of Sony’s output this generation, and ask myself what else would they pick from? What has Sony released for the PS5 that has had any cultural impact that stands alongside characters like Kratos or Nathan Drake? Is it really that surprising that Astro Bot has a dearth of works to draw from?

There are points when each console era and its respective heroes get their time in the spotlight with a dedicated sequence for each generation. The PS5 is conspicuously skipped over, however, as if there wasn’t enough material to merit it.

Four years in, the PlayStation 5 has been characterized by remasters and remakes banking on old ideas from better days, the upheaval of decades of legacy through studio shutdowns and job losses, the disappearance of beloved series that don’t fit a specific prestige framework Sony’s leaning into these days, and a live-service focus that has panned out exactly once. Just days before Astro Bot’s launch, Sony and Firewalk Studios announced plans to shut down Concord, one of the biggest pillars of Sony’s focus on forever games, two weeks after it came to stores. Astro Bot is a celebration, but what are we celebrating? Our collective endurance? The memory of a console family that was once characterized by a spirit of innovation which cannot be recaptured in this “number go up at all cost” climate?

But Astro Bot reflects so poorly on everything Sony’s done since we last played as its robot hero. It is perhaps the most joyful thing to come out of Sony since the last Astro Bot, but so much of that joy comes from looking back rather than existing in the now because all we have now is a wasteland. I’m scared about what that says for the future.