Oversaturation On The PSN
Since the early PS3 days, the PSN has been a beacon for top-notch games and a seal of quality for smaller, bite-sized downloadable titles. Heading into this new generation, Sony had prudently and painstakingly built up a thriving ecosystem of unique, experimental, art-house games that helped to buck the triple-A trend, empower smaller scale developers and give a spotlight to independently developed titles.
Smaller games such as Super Stardust HD, Flow, Flower, Journey, Rain and Hotline Miami, to name but a few, all made their debut on the PS3 with a fair amount of critical acclaim and commercial success, and over time the PSN soon built up a reputation for being the ideal home for some truly outstanding experiential indies.
Now don’t get me wrong, for the most part, the PS4 has emulated its predecessor’s indie-centric path and it’s emulated it well. We’ve seen fantastic indie games on PS4; Resogun, Downwell, Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture, Darkest Dungeon and Crypt of the Necrodancer all highlight the power of the burgeoning indie scene and simultaneously help to give the console a unique and special identity.
However, in my opinion, PS4 has chosen a far more unrestrictive, quantity over quality, shotgun-style approach in comparison to the PS3. You just need to look at the weekly PSN Blog to see that there’s a staggering swathe of smaller titles that flood the PSN store with regularity, and because of this it’s becoming exponentially more difficult to weed out the great games from the not so great games.
One title that stands out for me is Solbrain: Knight of Darkness. The game is the antithesis of shovelware and was absolutely lambasted for being built with stolen assets. It’s a deplorable, heinous game and it totally boggles my mind as to why something this downright abhorrent was greenlit by Sony – how the heck did this thing crawl its way onto the PSN?
Luckily, these kinds of games are few and far between, but they are detrimental to the Sony brand and the Japanese giant needs to understand this. I believe it would be beneficial for both the company and its consumers to more effectively curate the store. Sony should help get behind and give a spotlight to the more interesting and higher quality titles that the company has faith in — and just maybe learn to say no to the ones that they don’t.
