I think Sony gets it. Spreading the risk amongsts lots of smaller more niche titles. All it takes is one big hit to make it worth their while, and everybody is bound to get happy, because there's something for everyone's personal niche. It's similar to how the big movie studios consistently turn a profit. The business seems to be growing up.

A nice big blockbuster announcement would have been nice today though. Guess with fewer of those going around, these kinds of announcements are reserved for E3 (and maybe TGS for Japanese developers).

Rime for the PS4 looked amazing, very reminiscent of a Team Ico game. Between that and Shadow of the Beast reboot news, 2014 is entirely too far away.

While this is good for people looking for their own game, I'm not sure I personally will like it. I don't really spend too much time on small games like what they're going for. Of course it depends on the game but I usually just pick them up, play a few times, and never touch it again. Happened with Hotline Miami and rogue legacy already in the past couple months. I really like those games but there is nothing about them that really makes me want to play them much anymore. I prefer games with a lot of meat.

@xyzygy: What do you mean by a lot of "meat" to the game? I would say a game like CoD is just as shallow as Rogue Legacy. People just replay it more because of habit and the persistent iteration in releases. The reality is that there can only be so many AAA title per year. Asking Sony first parties to continually develop and iterate on Uncharted/GoW level games is unrealistic. Those games are the occasional jewel that is released in the bunch of smaller titles. That's always the way its been with Sony.

Also from the publisher side they don't care that you didn't go back and play Hotline Miami/RL. You paid for it (I assume on PC) and the they have your money. The publisher released a game that added to the diversity of their library and garnered the attention of a gamer, if they choose to go back and play Killzone 3 multiplayer that's their business.

Games like Hotline Miami/RL would never be 1st party games, HM is way too violent and RL makes a few borderline tasteless gags. Knack, Rime, Puppeteer, these are the new Sony 1st games. Those are combined with the more mature Killzone, Order, AAA-style games.

I don't know if any of these new games are smaller or more niche. Sony is just better at promoting second party games as their own (Guacamelee or Hohokum) and selling the PC ports as console exclusives. Its all PR. If you want meat to your games in the vein of Crusader Kings, Playstation is not the place, that's what PCs are for.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Papers, Please on the PS4/Vita at some point, I've seen some of the guys at Sony doting on that game pretty heavily on Twitter.

@djou: I don't like CoD though. Or really shooters in general. I like the Xenoblade Chronicles, Lost Odysseys, Dark Souls, Metal Gear Solids, etc. I'm just saying that I don't like these smaller games because I like bigger games.

I'm not downplaying anything that Sony is doing I just personally don't like all this focus on indie.

(Also how do you know if I paid for it or not? O.o Maybe I didn't and I was just testing them out to see if I liked them, and alas, I didn't enough to keep playing and purchase.)

One thing I feel like Sony isn't getting enough credit for is their inclusion of free to play games, honestly. At launch, and within the first few months of launch, the Ps4 will have DC Universe Online, Planetside 2, Blacklight, Warframe, and War Thunder, after you buy the Ps4 you'll have two free weeks of Driveclub and Resogun (as well as other indie games that come free with PS+), and if you buy the camera there's Playroom pre-installed.

Arguably it makes buying just the box a much more compelling offer than any other console released up to now; you could have hours of playtime with with multiple worthwhile games just at the cost of the box itself and not necessarily feel bad about not buying too many actual boxed games to come with it that could add up in price pretty quickly. If I were Sony, I'd be playing up the "free games" angle of buying the box itself pretty hard in the run up to launch.

@marokai: Yeah, I think it's pretty telling that people are trying to downplay just how many games Sony has at launch as being "too indie" or "a bunch of F2P". Give me a break, these same people used XBLA as a bullet point for the 360.

This doesn't really make any sense, as XBLA is/was decidedly anti-indie for a very long time and doesn't really have any F2P games besides Happy Wars, and I don't think that's ever been a bullet point for the 360.

@xyzygy: All the games you mentioned aren't first party either and they are developed by Japanese makers. You are misconstruing marketing with game development. The whole indie focus is very North American-centric because there is a scene around that stuff and its an easy hook when Sony is launching a new console in North America first. Those are the games being marketed front and center, but not the only games developed, and least of all none of them are first party games. Binding of Issac may be marketed as a smaller indie title but that game has some of the greatest depth and replayability of any game I can think of in the past five years.

Rime seems like a rip of Ico and I have no idea what the meat of the game is or if its big or small. Could be a 60 hours RPG, could be a 10 hour escort/puzzle platformer. Your categorization of little games and big games is subjective. Honestly I would rather have a tightly focused "small" game than a "large" game where I spend dozens of hours grinding through repetitive missions to prepare for a boss fight. If you want big games of the type your suggesting both Dark Souls 2 and MGSV will be released on the PS4.

@djou: Why does it matter if they're first party or not? ...I'm just saying I like these types of games better than small indie games. And I'm not saying that there won't be any larger scale games for the PS4 either. I know MGSV is coming and that's really not what I'm talking about. I just said personally I don't like this whole small scale indie focus. That's it.

(btw dark souls 2 is current gen)

I love the way Rime looked. It's bright colors, and massive landscapes are a huge thing that gets me interested in games. It also has a lot of mystery to it so far from the very short video that was shown at Gamescom. Very interested in playing this in the future.

The PC version of Dark Souls 2 comes day and date with the console versions. It's reportedly signifcantly prettier, and obviously will run smoother given proper hardware. It's safe to assume that Dark Souls 2 will be released on new gen consoles, likely day and date with all the other versions.

Im more interested to see what the shadow of the beast re-imagining comes out like.
That game back on the amiga scared the shit out of me as a kid - art design and music were so alien at the time, and psygnosis were a big big part of my gaming as a kid! Glad to see both the IP and team back in some form :D