ThePS5has been fairly disappointing. As a console where I can play new releases, I love it. Big games likeCall of Duty: Black Ops 6run great and look fantastic on the hardware. TheDualSenseis an excellent controller with a satisfying amount of heft. And it can run my 4K discs, Blu-rays, and DVDs. Do you notice how none of those benefits have anything to do with exclusive games?
For years now, the PS5 has been memed for having no games, but that isn’t exactly true.Silent Hill 2was one of my favorites from last year and, though I have mixed feelings on it, I undeniably spent a lot of time withFinal Fantasy 7 Rebirth. The console hassomegames, but it has yet to have a standout year. That’s especially noticeable because thePS4had multiple.
The PS4 Dominated The Mid-2010s
2015 gave usBloodborne,Until Dawn,Helldivers, andThe Order: 1886(your mileage may vary on that last one), plus remasters/remakes of beloved games with God of War 3 Remastered, Tearaway Unfolded, Journey Collector’s Edition, and Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection. During this time, the PS4 was also a hotspot for indie releases, and was the exclusive console home for Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, Axiom Verge, Apotheon, Nuclear Throne, Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, and Titan Souls.
I wouldn’t highlight 2018 as particularly strong, but it did see two great PlayStation exclusives inMarvel’s Spider-ManandGod of War.
2016 and 2017 were similarly strong. In 2016, players gotUncharted 4: A Thief’s End,The Last Guardian,No Man’s Sky,Ratchet & Clank, and MLB The Show 16, plus a remaster of Gravity Rush and a combined rerelease of Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls (another case where your mileage may vary). Naughty Dog kept its streak going in 2017, with Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, and it was also the year ofHorizon Zero Dawn,Gravity Rush 2,Nioh, Gran Turismo Sport, and Everybody’s Golf. Though they weren’t first-party releases, this year also saw the Sony exclusive releases of Yakuza 0 (outside Japan) and NieR: Automata.
For whatever reason, games skipped the Xbox more often in this era.
But 2020 was the console’s defining year. Over twelve months the PS4 gotDreams,Nioh 2,MLB The Show 2020, Final Fantasy 7 Remake,Predator: Hunting Grounds, The Last of Us Part 2,Ghost of Tsushima,Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales,Sackboy: A Big Adventure, andMarvel’s Iron Man VR. Not a remake or remaster in the bunch, just good to great new video games for a wide range of players. Well, kinda wide. Most of them are third-person action games, but Dreams, MLB The Show 2020, Sackboy, Predator, and Iron Man deviate from that norm.
And, while it’s easy to dismiss the third-person action-adventure games as more of the same from Sony,The Last of Us Part 2andFinal Fantasy 7 Remakeare two of the best third-person action games ever made (and extremely different from each other). Ghost of Tsushima is a fun open-world game with some cool ideas, and Spider-Man: Miles Morales is the kind of modestly scaled triple-A game we don’t get much of anymore. It’s a really strong crop of games.
Admittedly, 2020 was buoyed by the release of the PS5, and Sackboy and Spider-Man were cross-gen releases. But, take those out, and you still have eight exclusive titles (and it’s not like the games being available on PS5 took them away from PS4 players).
2020 was a strong year for triple-A gaming across the board and, while they weren’t PS4 exclusive, PlayStation owners could also playDoom Eternal, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War, Yakuza: Like A Dragon, and several other big-budget games.
The PS5 hasn’t had a year as strong as 2015-2017, or even one as strong as 2020. If the generation ended now, the PS5 would go down as a disappointment; a powerful system that never got the games it needed to make that power worthwhile. But, one year as strong as 2020 could be enough to change that narrative. Time will tell if Sony is still capable of delivering it.
