PlayStation 5 two years later: where is the new generation of Sony?

PlayStation 5 two years later

Launched on November 12, 2020 in the USA and Japan, and then landed in Europe a few days later, PlayStation 5 turns two and here we are to take stock of the state of the Sony platform, on the innovations it has introduced during these first twenty-four months and of those still on the horizon.

The best-selling console in the third quarter of 2022 worldwide, PS5 reconfirms itself as the object of desire for most users, thanks to a still rather limited availability, which is inevitably slowing down the numbers accumulated so far but at the same time creates an indisputable aura of charm and elusiveness around the flagship of the Japanese house.

Sales, availability and price

PS5, standard and Digital Edition With 25 million of units sold as of September 30, PS5 has scored a second year very similar to the first in terms of figures. Thanks to a record second four-month period, with 3.3 million pieces added to those already placed and resulted in a substantial increase in the console's user base as the situation in the stores improved.

In short, sales have rewarded Sony's console, despite everything (we'll get to that in a moment), allowing it to build a certain margin over the direct competition of the Xbox Series X | S, at least according to the sales figures of PlayStation and Xbox provided by Microsoft to the UK antitrust as part of the well-known investigation into the acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

The factor of availability has played and continues to play a terribly significant role in the optics of the success of PS5, but it is clear and evident that things are not like twenty-four months ago: the well-known semiconductor crisis bites less and the production chain has somehow reorganized, but they have entered other elements of difficulty on the pitch.

The latter have pushed Sony towards a decision never made before: to increase the price of PlayStation 5 two years after its launch, that is, when generally there is a downward adjustment of the price lists thanks to the lower incidence of construction and assembly costs. A move that involved practically all territories apart from the USA, bringing the standard edition from € 499.99 to € 549.99 and the Digital Edition from € 399.99 to € 449.99.

PlayStation Plus revolution

PlayStation Plus The second year of the PS5's life was undoubtedly one of great decisions: on the one hand the aforementioned price increase, which in fact did not contribute in any way to improving the 'image of the Jim Ryan management, considered by many to be focused on business and far from the actual passions of users; on the other, the PlayStation Plus revolution, which after months of hesitation has finally tried to take a new path.

Available since last June, the new PlayStation Plus incorporates the offer of the PlayStation Now streaming platform, offering three different types of subscriptions: Essential, the classic version that includes online multiplayer and a selection of monthly games for PS5 and PS4; Extra, which adds a catalog of about four hundred titles to that package that can be downloaded at no additional cost; and finally Premium, which also sees the presence of the PlayStation classics and streaming.

PlayStation Plus, the service interface In fact, the huge amount of content reserved for the Extra and Premium tiers is very reminiscent of the the all-you-can-play experience that has always characterized Xbox Game Pass, with one difference, albeit not insignificant: the non-inclusion of exclusive first parties since the day of release, an aspect that Sony discussed in more occasions not considering that type of implementation possible where you want to maintain current investments in development.

After a particularly aggressive debut, the new PlayStation Plus has inevitably slowed down the pace, focusing on older and lower-value titles , but apparently the revolution wanted by Sony has not so far made a breakthrough: in the last quarter the subscribers fell from 47.2 million to 45.4 million, so the increase on which the Japanese company mattered, at least in absolute terms.

Games of the second year

Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection, Nathan relaxes at home Although the last generations of consoles have got us used very well in this sense, with particularly reduced learning times in order to make the most of the hardware available to developers, it is clear that the quality of the games tends to increase thanks to the experience gained and the improvement of the tools.

From this point of view PS5 is no exception, although in its second year of life the console has continued to maintain a cross-gen approach legitimately voted not to exclude the more than one hundred million users who still own a PlayStation 4. There were also remasters such as Uncharted: The Legacy of Thieves Collection, which had the merit of opening 2022 very well.

Horizon Forbidden West, Aloy and first party, in February the extraordinary Horizon Forbidden West made its debut, followed after a few weeks, in March, by Gran Turismo 7: a double win of great value for PlayStation Studios, capable of literally annihilating a competition, that of Xbox , still unable to effectively organize its line-up.

Six months followed in which PlayStation 5 let itself be pampered by the relevance of third party productions such as Dying Light 2: Stay Human, the next-gen version of Cyberpunk 2077 and Grand Theft Auto V, the extraordinary Elden Ring and then Ghostwire: Tokyo, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, Stray and the exciting A Plague Tale: Requiem.

The Last of Us Part 1, Ellie with the rifle in her arms At that point Sony started hitting the market again with the likes of The Last of Us Part 1, a remake as much discussed and appreciated, and of course God of War Ragnarok, which will have the task of accompanying the console during the Christmas period: according to the first reports, it seems that the new chapter of the Santa Monica Studio series is doing really well.

We have seen a clear improvement in the offer compared to the first year of life of PS5? In reality, the quality level of the experiences, in particular those packaged by PlayStation Studios, has remained constant since the beginning, but the technological innovations that we will probably see starting from 2023 are still missing, also thanks to the aforementioned cross-gen approach.

The future

PS5 Although the PS5 first party catalog for 2023 is still sketchy, with only Marvel's Spider-Man 2 already made official, but several announcements coming soon (perhaps over the course of the The Game Awards 2022: Death Stranding 2?) And some important temporal exclusives (Forspoken, Final Fantasy 16, Silent Hill 2) established for some time, the future of the Sony console in terms of software is certainly not in question.

PlayStation Studios have always shown that they know how to work very well, with great concreteness, and they will not fail to repeat themselves next year. Moreover, the catalog will be able to count on extraordinary support from third parties: from Dead Space to Dead Island 2, from Hogwarts Legacy to the remake of Resident Evil 4, from Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League to Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, passing through Street Fighter 6, we will have nothing to complain about.

PlayStation VR2 The future of PlayStation 5 is less clear in terms of hardware. On the one hand, we know that PlayStation VR2 will arrive on February 22, the new virtual reality viewer that promises wonders, but will have to be able to convince even the skeptics to carve out an adequate audience, given the high price; on the other hand, there are more and more insistent rumors about a redesign of the console that can make it somehow more compact and efficient, unifying the versions to bring a single model to stores with a removable and therefore optional disc player.

Of course, there is also talk of a revision of the mid-generation hardware, with the possible arrival of a PS5 Pro that can push the specifications of the platform to the point of allowing it to more easily manage demanding technologies such as ray tracing. On this front, however, the assumptions become more smoky, while the timing tends to expand: it is still early to talk about it, but there is no doubt that Sony is evaluating all the options.

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