After 5 years of owning a PS5, mine is off to a new home after gathering dust on a shelf for a year. I have had PlayStation’s since the PS2 era, and this is the first generation where it felt like a dead experience on PlayStation.
Playstation used to have great single player games and I still played those, but those games were all from the PS4 era. Instead Sony tried to do live service garbage and it was a disaster. Honestly if the PS5 did not have backward comparability to PS4, I don’t think I would have played anything notable on it. Add on that I have to pay a subscription for online play and it just feels like a waste of money to have a PS5.
I bought a used PC for under $200 and installed Bazzite on it. This little thing has crushed the PS5 for me. Huge catalogue of games and free multiplayer. Add emulation on top of that and my PlayStation could not compete.
Feels like the end of an era. Consoles are dead and PC’s and Linux gaming is the future.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:PlayStation_5-only_games
That’s a very short list
There is exactly zero game I want from that list.
Some of these games aren’t even released yet! Astros playroom was the only one I really enjoyed. That is sad.
Astro Bot is amazing. Probably not worth the price of admission if it is the only one you care about, but nevertheless a great game.
I’m a pc guy, but I wish the trigger haptics for the ps5 took off. I only got to try them a few weeks ago, but they felt cool.
The haptics/adaptive triggers are the best thing about the PS5 and it’s not close.
I have the ps5 trigger haptic working in Hades 2. Linux PC (Garuda Dr460onized). They do feel very nice but the first time it happened I thought my buttons were breaking from being hard to press.
Hoping for more adoption too, but it is a niche thing. Not everyone has the controller.
I have the controller and it’s honestly too big and heavy for my hands for longer play seasions. I don’t like it at all even tho I love the haptics.
And it will get shorter as the exclusives make their way to PC. Ghost of Yotei and Wolverine are very likely to.
This is great for the industry.
When you also factor in that Valve is releasing the Steam machine, maybe Sony will have to actually compete with somebody and offer a better value. Price cuts. More storage. Bluetooth audio compatibility (seriously how is that acceptable in 2025???). More PSVR2 games, or even provide some tools or incentives to release PSVR2 versions of PSVR games.
Heck, this incentivizes Sony to just develop and publish better games as a whole too. Not that they’re bad or anything now, but it has seemed like a lot of what they’ve done has been safe. 3rd person, over-the shoulder, cinematic experiences. I’ve played God of War, Horizon, Ratchet and Clank, and Uncharted for the PS4 and PS5 and they all kind of feel like the same games just re-skinned. I miss the days when insomniac did unique and creative stuff instead of just cranking out Marvel tie-in games.
The Internet blows up more often when an exclusive is announced. Fuck exclusives I’m not getting FF7Rebirth if it’s not coming out on PC > there’s no game on that exclusive list that makes me want to buy that console > repeat. Nintendo barely gets away with it by trying to make platforms with a physical gimmick that can’t be ported to PC (yet).
They actually can be ported. Dualshock/dualsense for example, or steam controller supports gyro sensor, so you can play whole “TLOZ: Breath of the wild” and second game on emulator on PC. Other games too, actually, even most gimmicky one’s. WiiU games is a bit more tricky due to second screen, but there not a lot of games that fully used it or used at all.