I know the State of Play was kind of a tie-in to the Tokyo Game Show but I think it was also an attempt by Sony to refute the idea that they’ve abandoned Japanese developers. I don’t know if that’s going to be Rise Of The Ronin or not but considering that State of Play also featured Radiant Silvergun and a Yakuza remake I’m going to be optimistic and say things are looking a lot better now for Japanese devs making the sort of games they want to. I hate to see it when their forced, either by publishers or economics, to make games that look and seem Western and it’s so much more interesting to get something undiluted by marketing demands. I don’t think Ghost Of Tsushima is a particularly good game but if it ends up helping Japanese developers create all these news games based on their history and culture then it could end up being my favourite game ever. So, on that point alone I would say that Nintendo had the better week, but it’s good to know it was at least close.

Sony has never been shy about announcing games that aren’t out for years, with only pre-rendered trailers, so why have they suddenly stopped now, when there’s an open goal in front of them? They could have a dozen announced games right now, for people to look forward to, and I have no idea why they haven’t. Microsoft isn’t talking about anything because they’ve got nothing close to being ready but surely Sony must have? Their output doesn’t rely on a bunch of newly acquired studios so where are the new games from Bend, Sucker Punch, Team Asobi, and the rest? I don’t know what they’re waiting for or what the delay is, and clearly they don’t want to tell us, but it seems to me a serious marketing mistake. The obvious thing missing from Sony though was any new first party games, or indeed anything other than God Of War. Tekken 8 looked good and so did Rise Of The Ronin and the Yakuza remake. In terms of Sony, I also thought that was the best God Of War Ragnarök trailer by far, the first to get me excited for the game for any reason other than I liked the first one.

I’m not a fan of Octopath Traveler, and the sequel isn’t an exclusive, but there were some interesting games amongst the third party stuff, especially the new one from the Danganronpa team.

Sony direct