Let’s see if they learned anything after getting trounced by a ridiculous gadget with two screens. I am betting: no.
So in all likelihood it’s going to be a new platform that runs new versions of the same shit you can already buy, forcing developers to target yet another generic computer behind a proprietary and paranoid interface, plus the occasional “exclusive” funded solely to keep pretending consoles exist. Desperately continuing the business model from the PS2 era, an uncomfortable number of years ago. Pretending every game for their brand is made for their brand, or else it was a port from somewhere else. But most games aren’t ports, anymore. They’re just games. They’re on everything. Because hey guess what: you sell a generic computer. You sell damn near the same generic computer as the other guys. You even strangled all chance of staggered launches creating ‘buy now or wait for better hardware’ dynamics, by doing “pro” versions, mid-generation.
That should be fantastic for handhelds. Nintendo knew it, and added their toy-company silliness to a generic Android thing, and absolutely printed money. Again. Valve knew it, and after a failed effort to be Android that was more like being 3DO, turned a niche class of ‘well that’s neat’ gizmo into a completely viable gaming PC the size of a long brick. Delightful internet weirdos are trying to marry the two concepts with userland emulation, so your phone can run Elden Ring. Or at least Pizza Tower.
And into that environment, I fully expect Sony to trip over their own dick and try to sell you yet another offensively incompatible Memory Stick format, for a machine that claims to have “solved” the convenience and immediacy of Switch cartridges, to play archaic remixes of whole-ass games that system got a year earlier. Buoyed, of course, by the strength of their first-party library… versus Nintendo.
Let’s see if they learned anything after getting trounced by a ridiculous gadget with two screens. I am betting: no.
So in all likelihood it’s going to be a new platform that runs new versions of the same shit you can already buy, forcing developers to target yet another generic computer behind a proprietary and paranoid interface, plus the occasional “exclusive” funded solely to keep pretending consoles exist. Desperately continuing the business model from the PS2 era, an uncomfortable number of years ago. Pretending every game for their brand is made for their brand, or else it was a port from somewhere else. But most games aren’t ports, anymore. They’re just games. They’re on everything. Because hey guess what: you sell a generic computer. You sell damn near the same generic computer as the other guys. You even strangled all chance of staggered launches creating ‘buy now or wait for better hardware’ dynamics, by doing “pro” versions, mid-generation.
That should be fantastic for handhelds. Nintendo knew it, and added their toy-company silliness to a generic Android thing, and absolutely printed money. Again. Valve knew it, and after a failed effort to be Android that was more like being 3DO, turned a niche class of ‘well that’s neat’ gizmo into a completely viable gaming PC the size of a long brick. Delightful internet weirdos are trying to marry the two concepts with userland emulation, so your phone can run Elden Ring. Or at least Pizza Tower.
And into that environment, I fully expect Sony to trip over their own dick and try to sell you yet another offensively incompatible Memory Stick format, for a machine that claims to have “solved” the convenience and immediacy of Switch cartridges, to play archaic remixes of whole-ass games that system got a year earlier. Buoyed, of course, by the strength of their first-party library… versus Nintendo.
I wish them the best. But I expect a good laugh.