‘Astro Bot is the second coming of PS5 or the death knell’

If someone were to make a comedy series based on the video games industry, then everything that’s happened this week would seem too silly and contrived to ever be included. I don’t know what to say about Concord that you haven’t already been thinking, but what a perfect disaster. Sony literally couldn’t have handled it worse.

They knew no one was interested when it was announced, after that awful reveal. They should’ve known no one was interested years ago, because how can you possibly expect something that’s jumping on a bandwagon eight years ago to still be relevant today? Then they should’ve got the clue when no one cared about the beta either. But somehow they pushed on anyway and then suddenly got cold feet just 11 days after launch.

The fact that Concord went offline the same day that Astro Bot was released is just pure comedy poetry. It’s a million to one shot of incompetence that shouldn’t have been possible, and yet here we are.

I have seen a lot of online discussion already, about how Sony is only going to double down on live service games after the failure of Concord, and that the sky high reviews of Astro Bot won’t change anything. And I wouldn’t argue that they’re wrong.

I’d be very surprised if they cancelled Fairgame$ now, even though they almost certainly should. But beyond that it’s impossible to say what they’re doing, as they haven’t actually announced anything else, despite having anything between four and 10 other live service games in development (since they originally said they had 12).

It all depends on how they take the success of Astro Bot. Or even if they consider it a success. It might have reviewed well but I doubt it’s going to be a massive seller, or at least not on the scale of God Of War or Horizon. One of their execs already dismissed it as not a major game and to judge from the reviews I’m not sure it would’ve even got made if it wasn’t the 30th anniversary of PlayStation this year.

Lots of people, including me, are celebrating the fact that a single-player game has been so warmly received, while a live service game has flopped, but the problem is Astro Bot isn’t a typical Sony formula single-player game. It’s nothing like Horizon or The Last Of Us or any of the others, it’s a happy, family friendly game that’s riffing off of Super Mario.

If this had been, say, Uncharted 5 then Sony could’ve immediately commissioned another sequel and a couple of spin-offs, as well as other similar games in other franchises. But what are they going to do even if Astro Bot is a financial hit? I’ll tell you what they’ll do if it’s a more minor success: absolutely nothing.

The other thing about Astro Bot is that it’s got all these cameos from other games in it but most of the Sony ones are basically dead franchises. What’s the point of celebrating WipEout or Jak And Daxter if Sony has no intention of making those games again?

I see this week as a turning point for Sony, a fork in the road. Go down one path and they’ll just be making endless generic live service games forever, as everyone slowly forgets why the PlayStation brand was ever popular in the first place.

Go down the other path, recognise that people like Astro Bot because it’s high quality and celebrates the history of PlayStation (and isn’t relentlessly grimdark), and suddenly everything comes alive again.

I would imagine another benefit of Astro Bot is that it wasn’t that expensive to make, compared to other Sony games, so maybe it can also show how not everything has to take 10 years and $300 million to make.

But who knows what they’ll choose to do. It’s an important decision though: is PlayStation a leader or a follower? Is it about jumping on the latest bandwagon, as soon as it comes along, or does it stand for something and a certain type of game? I know what I’d like to think is the answer but I’m not sure Sony would agree…

By reader Gaston