Sony Knew How to Start a Week

Sony Interactive Entertainment, for whatever reason, had the brilliant idea to send their fanbase through a rollercoaster of emotions right at the start of the week. It was all quite entertaining.

They kicked it off by announcing which PlayStation 4 peripherals will be compatible with the PlayStation 5. The list is largely light on surprises, with accessories like racing wheels, headsets (official and unofficial), fight sticks, and flight sticks (don’t confuse those two) working on the system, along with the PlayStation Move and PlayStation VR Aim Controller for PlayStation VR games on PS5. There’s one little catch: The DualShock 4 will be compatible with the PS5, but will only work for PS4 games supported through backwards compatibility.

This shouldn’t be quite as surprising as it is, with how Sony has championed the DualSense’s unique features. The haptic feedback and adaptive triggers can and will be used for neat functions. But anyone who had the idea of using a DS4 as a backup controller they could give to their friends if they stopped by, or as a second controller overall, had their expectations vanish in the wind. Not every PS5 game will use those DualSense features; the haptic feedback option will rarely be used in multiplatform third-party games thanks to the XSX’s controller not having it, but both will have adaptive triggers. If anyone wanted to use a DS4 for games that won’t use the functions, that’s too bad, even though the DaulSense features will largely be used by first-party developers.

This is dividing the very online gaming audience into predictable camps, between those fine with the decision and the others who think it’s anti-consumer. The DualSense controller looks more ergonomically friendly than the DS4, so I personally don’t mind this. But having the extra option wouldn’t have hurt. Microsoft later confirmed, clearly in response, that Xbox One controllers will work for all games on Xbox Series X. The console wars shall be with us forever.

SIE only waited hours after this to announce that a new State of Play stream will air on Thursday. Any big Sony fan anticipating the PS5 immediately concluded that this would focus on showing another dizzying array of software coming to a system presumably around three months away from launch. But no, that’s not the purpose of this stream.

There will be updates and new looks at third-party and indie games revealed during June’s stream, but the focus will be on third-party games coming to PS4 and PSVR. This presentation will be over 40 minutes long, so expect lengthy looks at upcoming cross-generation titles. It’s not the stream anyone outside Sony expected at this point, and you can guess how vocal company fans are taking this. Take a peek into the comments of that PlayStation Blog post to see the reactions it’s generating, and know that they’re tame compared to the replies under the Twitter announcement. Next-gen console hype warps people’s brains.

There’s no issue here for anyone who owns a PS4 and has no intention of getting a PS5 just yet. I’m not just speaking for myself here; this will apply to most players. It’s nice that Sony let everyone know what this stream will be about before they got too excited, to let fans air their feelings of resentment now. Could you imagine if they simply announced this as a State of Play full of previews for upcoming titles and left it at that before the actual showcase? Saying the result would be a supreme internet shitshow is putting it lightly. The reactions would be three times as bad. This has since been slightly abated with Bloomberg reporting that some kind of PS5 announcement is tentatively planned for this month — slightly.

Sony also threw a bone to their most dedicated Sony fanbase by pissing off everyone else. The rumors of Spider-Man being an exclusive to the PlayStation versions of Marvel’s Avengers were confirmed to be true. This isn’t a timed exclusive like many of these are nowadays, but a permanent one. You could guess how reactions to this have been. Sony fans (or, really now, fanboys) are loving this, while those on Xbox or PC platformers who were looking forward to the game are puzzled if they’re not furious.

This is a bizarre way to handicap the other console versions. Even if the Xbox and PC iterations get their own exclusive character, they’re unlikely to be on par with Spider-Man, one of the most popular superheroes around. It also makes no sense that Spider-Man is exclusive to the PS iterations in a game developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Square Enix. Yes, there’s an exclusive Spider-Man game on PS4 from Insomniac, but the announcement info goes out of its way to specify how this won’t be that Spider-Man. Sony only has the movie rights to Spider-Man and not exclusive game rights, which is why he appeared in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 on Switch.

The news isn’t entirely worth celebrating for PlayStation owners, either. Spider-Man being only on PS platforms means Crystal Dynamics is unlikely to spend as many resources implementing the character into the game’s world compared to other characters available on all platforms.  This is an even bigger rollercoaster of emotions than initially implied, not to mention a high-level dick move.

The dick move has since hardened even further since this news was provided, as Sony confirmed one day afterward that select items and cosmetics will be exclusive to the PlayStation versions for 30 days. If they keep this up, questions will be raised about why this wasn’t a PlayStation-exclusive title.

I don’t know what got into Sony this week, but this isn’t over. Considering how hype cycles for next-gen consoles tend to go, if you think this is exhausting, just wait and see what’s in store over the next three months. That is, unless you follow this discourse hell that’s political news, which makes all this feel quaint.