Sony’s PlayStation 5 Reveal event had us do a double take

They said we would see the games. We definitely saw them!

PS5 reveal event - Horizon Forbidden West

After months of speculation and a week-long delay, Sony finally officially unveiled the PlayStation 5 console. They promised us we would see the “Future of Gaming”, teasing us that we would see many exclusive titles, thus giving us more reasons to get a console. Did they deliver? In short, absolutely! The PS5 reveal event was full of games, the big majority being either exclusive or first-party titles, and we even got a huge surprise: we learned there would be not one but TWO versions of the PS5 at launch!

PlayStation Studios firing on all cylinders

PlayStation Studios showed us a glimpse of 6 games. The biggest one is for sure Marvel’s Spider-Man Miles Morales, the sequel to the PS4 best-selling exclusive. The developers presented a very good-looking trailer, with a release date of Holiday 2020. Our guess is this will be one of the launch titles.

There is another title that blew us away: the official unveiling of the Horizon Zero Dawn sequel, titled Horizon: Forbidden West. In the trailer, we saw every point of reference from the first game: dinosaurs, landscapes, lush vegetation, etc. Also, we caught a glimpse of a brand new addition to the gameplay mechanics: underwater combat! Everything looked great. The studio didn’t announce a release date yet.

We finally got a glimpse into Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, the sequel to the 2016 Ratchet & Clank PS4 game. Polyphony Digital demonstrated the look of Gran Turismo 7. One of Sony’s mascot, Sackboy, saw a return to form with a new platformer called Sackboy: A Big Adventure, which will be a coop 3D platformer. Finally, we learned that every PS5 console will come preloaded for free with a game called Astro’s Playroom. It will be the equivalent of the PS4’s Playroom title, allowing us to discover all of the functionalities of the DualSense controller.

Games from the other studios

The new game developed by Bluepoint Games made a lot of people guessing about what it could be. The confirmation came in the form of another full-on remake: Demon’s Soul. The developers confirmed a complete rebuild from the ground up for the next generation of console. We don’t have an official release date, but the announcement pleased many of us.

Square Enix loves to show off what they can do early for their titles in development. During the PS5 reveal event, we learned about Project Athia, a title developed exclusively for the console. The company didn’t reveal any official release date.

The presentation included many other titles, from independent to triple-A games. Many of the developers behind them decided to go with either an exclusivity, a console exclusivity, or a timed exclusivity. Just to name a few, I can list Deathloop (the stylish Bethesda game that was unveiled during E3 2019), Solar Ash (the new game from the developers of Hyper Light Drifter), Godfall (the action-RPG from Gearbox announced during last year’s Game Awards), GhostWire: Tokyo (the Japanese horror game seen at least year’s E3, which made us fall in love with Ikumi Nakamura), etc.

In terms of non-exclusive games, Capcom unveiled Resident Evil: Village (after many leaks). We also got a glimpse of Hitman 3, the new game in IO Interactive’s popular franchise, which got a release window of January 2021.

In total, more than 2 dozen games were shown in about 75 minutes, for pretty much every type of gamers. The presentation was very well-paced, with very little downtime. Just when we thought it was the end we finally got a look at the consoles.

We saw the console… 2 versions of it!

A majority of gamers on social media were not expecting to see the box. We wanted to lower our expectations. Sony said they were centering their presentations on the games. To actually have 2 SKUs is surprising, but to go the Xbox route and go with a Digital Edition was very surprising. Especially after the shade Sony threw at Microsoft with their “how to share a game” at the PS4 launch. Many expected to have more of a PS5-PS5 Pro combo. (I certainly believed that.) While many may not agree, it makes sense to have chosen this option as a lot more people are going the digital route. We often hear about gamers not even remembering when the last time they put a disk in their console. There are those die-hards that choose to support the physical disk market and also use their consoles as a Blu-ray player. Sony is giving us options, which is nice. They also presented a slew of accessories: a headset, a media remote, a double charger for DualSense controllers, and a camera. We don’t have any details on the actual release date or prices just yet.

Conclusion: Sony did what they had to

In terms of the reveal event, Sony absolutely did everything they had to do. They managed the fans’ expectations, by warning us not to get our hopes too high. The presentation revealed something for pretty much any kind of gamers, following a great pace. People had a lot of expectations, and it was the most-watched gaming live stream in their history (7.32 million people). Numbers were even higher than E3 shows, according to Millie Amand, a Youtube statistics manager.

For a PlayStation gamer like me, everything I wanted from this presentation was there. The company presented all types of games for everyone. They delivered on the promise to present unique exclusive experiences. We got a glimpse of some short-term projects and some far away ones. Of course, I would have loved to see a glimpse of the console UI or some functionalities. I definitely still have a lot of questions. The important thing though is that it got me excited about what’s coming. What did you think? Let us know on our social media channels.

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