Last night (if you are from India), Sony finally unveiled the PlayStation 5, and my oh my, does it look good. It’s clear that the company went back to the drawing board with this one, because the device looks nothing like its predecessors. Swapping the box like structure for a more “wavy” and ‘wing like structure”, it’s clear that the PlayStation 5 has the latest Xbox beat in terms of design.
However, the main focus of the event wasn’t at the much awaited console. With E3 cancelled, Sony took it upon itself to turn the PS5 launch into a mini E3, and spent the first hour or so announcing new games, before it gave us the first look at its latest beast. The PlayStation 5 took just about 5 minutes of the presentation, with Sony really going in for the game launches.
Many game studios were invited for the launch, and all in all, we got to see what the new generation of gaming would look like. And it looks like the future is, Indie for some reason? In a weird turn of events, a lot of the games that were announced had an indie vibe to them and looked like art movies. However, these games showcased just how much of a jump in performance is offered by the PS5, with ever changing sceneries and dynamic environments loading oh so smoothly.
Lots of new games were announced in the presentation, including some brand new titles and some much awaited sequels. Gran Turismo 7, one of the most intense racing games, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, which even had some of its gameplay featured, Demon Souls 3, a remake of the PS3 title, were all titles from much awaited franchises that will make their way into the next gen of gaming.
Some new titles, Project Athia, Returnal, Sackboy, Astro’s Playroom, Destruction AllStars and Godfall, also made their way into the list of PS5 exclusives.
With E3 being cancelled, many 3rd party games were also announced at the event, including Hitman 3, the final chapter in the hitman series, Resident Evil Village, and NBA 2k21. Many others games were also unveiled, but now’s the time to get into the showstoppers.
Sony certainly knows the art of keeping the audience engaged, and that is why it started the show with a bang, with the announcement of Spiderman: Miles Morales. The sequel to Sony’s Spiderman which made its way to the PS4 in 2018, and took the gaming industry by storm, Spiderman: Miles Morales will take the story of the “Spiderman” universe further, with a new character at the centre, at least from the looks of it. However, there was no mention of GOW2, the sequel to the Game of the Year of 2018, which might have disappointed fans of the series (it disappointed me for sure).
However, Sony saved another major player for the end, and announced it in the form of Horizon Zero Dawn 2, the sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn, the game of the year of 2017. Take control of Aloy, a hunter who ventures through a post-apocalyptic land ruled by robotic creatures in a game that you can’t help but love. The small clips of the gameplay that made their way into the presentation were an ode to how far gaming has come in just 3 years.
After all the games were announced, Sony finally went on to unveil the now white Playstation, which looks like a beautiful “curvy” tower. Powered AMD Zen 2 CPU and AMD’s RDNA 2-based GPU, coupled with 16GB of RAM and an 825GB SSD, PS5 is being marketed as the “biggest leap in performance” Sony has ever taken. The company still did not announce a price, or a release date too while we are at it, but it announced another important thing.
The company showed that there will be two models of the device, a standard version, which will play both physical and downloaded copies and a digital version which, as the name suggests, will only play digital copies, as in, games that have been downloaded. This gives us the idea that the base price of the standard version might be a little higher than its predecessors, which is why the company decided to launch a cheaper, digital version at a lower price point.
However, nothing is confirmed as of yet and the developers might just be giving us a chance to explore new options.
