Home

 › 

Articles

 › 

Has Sony Gotten Lazy with the PS4?

Has Sony Gotten Lazy with the PS4?

Have you checked the PlayStation Plus Instant Game Collection lately? You know, the six free games anyone who subscribes gets for their PS3, PS4, and Vita every month? It’s a nice perk, but something troubling has been happening as of late. The games being doled out are starting to slip in quality. It’s almost as though the company knows it’s trumped Microsoft with its subscription service, and is slacking off.

Let’s look at the July 2015 offerings. Rocket League , Styx: Master of Shadows , Mousecraft , Entwined , Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions , and Rain were given out to players. Which is fine. Rocket League and Geometry Wars 3 were brand new games, after all. But look at that list. None of these are truly AAA games, and many have been on the systems for quite some time. Rain is two years old, and Styx and Entwined both came out in 2014.

The August 2015 PlayStation Plus lineup attempts to dazzle people with big names. Look! There are God of War and Lara Croft games! Except when you look closer, you see they’re lacking in luster. God of War: Ascension is over two years old now. While Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris is more recent, it isn’t a core installment. It’s also one of the top-down, cooperative multiplayer games, which is fine, but doesn’t shine as brightly as, say, the Tomb Raider reboot would.

The rest of August’s PlayStation Plus offerings only serve to make things worse. The most recent release, as a whole, is Stealth Inc. 2: A Game of Clones from this past April. CastleStorm , Limbo , and Sound Shapes are all games we’ve played before. They’ve been on Sony platforms for years. It’s been done.

Has Sony Gotten Lazy with the PS4?

If this were a new development, it’d be forgiveable, but it seems Sony has been slacking and getting comfortable for a few months now. I used to race to the PlayStation Store the first Tuesday of every month to grab the new games. I haven’t since March. We got Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes in June, but it’s the briefest game in the series and really an add-on for The Phantom Pain. Dishonored was added in April, but it’s three years old.

It’s difficult to complain about a $50 yearly membership that guarantees you six free games for three platforms each month. After all, Sony didn’t have to do that. For a long time, Microsoft charged more than that just for the honor of playing online. But when you’re paying those fees, the service is hyped as providing access to amazing, quality games, and you’re getting titles that don’t excite you, something’s wrong. The company has gotten lazy.

To top