PlayStation 5 In-Depth 2 Year Longterm Review: How Is Sony Doing?

foreign [Music] here we are two years later with PlayStation 5 and yes it really doesn't feel like it but nature is healing PS5 consoles are readily becoming available to buy at a moment's notice most of the time at least either way whether you're considering buying a PS5 soon or you've been a current owner it's time to reflect on how the console has been doing so far across games features services and Sony as a whole this is PlayStation 5 two years later [Music] since launch PS5 has had an incredibly strong output with first party software it's always been one of Sony's strongest and most important tenants of their gaming Hardware so it's a good thing that they've been able to keep this up going into year two in January saw the release of the Uncharted Legacy thieves collection and this is a native PS5 combo pack of Uncharted 4 and the Lost Legacy this is more in line with the trend we saw during ps5's first year where a handful of late life cycle PS4 games got the PS5 treatment so this is more of a filler title but still something where if you haven't had the chance to play either of these games you've now got an excellent option here with these two games looking absolutely gorgeous on PS5 PlayStation Studios teams have done an excellent job across the board offering a wide range of performance settings and with Uncharted you can do Native 4K 30 1440p60 there's a 1080p 120 High frame rate mode and eventually updated to offer a high fidelity 4K 40 FPS mode Ultra fast loading and dual sense features are of course present here as well filler title it may be but it's a no slouch definitive edition of two fantastic games February was a big month with the long-awaited sequel Horizon forbidden West and it did have a somewhat problematic first few months with bugs and a shoddy performance mode which was all dressed over time with patches but overall it largely builds upon the characters world and combat of the PS4 original and an evolutionary impactful way mind you we're not here to actually review this game or any other that we bring up so by all means this game may not have been for you or that you didn't enjoy it but it's undeniably a high profile release this year on both PS4 and PS5 and one played on PS5 this is a truly Next Generation treat a rare case too considering many cross mps5 titles have this distinction of just being a maxed out PC setting of a PS4 game but this doesn't really feel like that at all I do find it's a bit superficial to harp on visuals or true Next Generation games all the time but PS5 has had a few of those so far and we can safely add Horizon to that list because this is a breathtaking open world game that is dare I say one of the best looking to date but after my 70 hour playthrough I'll vouch for just how much more there is to this game than just visuals March is one Gran Turismo 7 launched and at least initially it was awesome to see a new Mainline Gran Turismo game come out in a reasonable amount of time with new PlayStation Hardware something we haven't had since the PS2 days unfortunately the launch was hampered by the required online connection which still does persist today and complaints of not being able to sell cars for in-game credits this Amplified by the new in-game economy and monetization system whereby you can no longer pay a few dollars for a car on PSN but instead credits that once in game might cost a lot more real world money depending on the car polyphony digital responded to these criticisms in a timely manner offering a few short-term Solutions but even today many of these complaints still hold I'm personally not a Die Hard Gran Turismo fan so I'll leave the judgment to those that know better but outside of the MTX this is in many ways a return to form Gran Turismo game that will see years of long-term support later in March and early April both ghosts were Tokyo and MLB the Show 22 released ghostwire Tokyo being a PS5 console timed exclusive like death loop from last year and it's a similar story in that it's a great game and it's easy to see why Sony wanted to secure some kind of agreement with this one MLB 22 an outlier where Sony has long agreed to continue developing the series with the stipulation from the MLB Association that the game releases on multiple platforms this year was again on Game Pass but now also Nintendo switch assuming you like baseball this is always a good pick even though you don't really have many options outside of where you want to play this September we had The Last of Us Part One launch and let's just address the elephant in the room right away this game saw a lot of criticism for being a remake of a nine-year-old PS3 game with an eight-year-old PS4 remaster and having a recommended retail price of 69.99 USD basically full price depending on where you live personally and I've said this much before in other videos I see where people are coming from but at the end of the day this remake almost didn't happen considering the story of how it came to be and price should not be factored into the quality of the game that's for you the individual to decide since money means different things to different people the game won't stay that price forever but the quality itself will remain so you decide when it's worth it if at all having said that this is now the definitive way to experience The Last of Us it brings in part two's visuals and then some with like gameplay enhancements and a plethora of accessibility options which can be a game changer for some many consider the last of us to be one of and I cannot stress this enough one of the best games of all time and this remake in many ways solidifies that and then just short of a few days before PS5 second anniversary was the launch of God of War Ragnarok a game that has had high expectations since the Monumental success and critical Acclaim of the 2018 one and so far at least Ragnarok has hit those expectations pretty much addressing the few complaints from the last game and taking this one to new heights with engaging story beats and Incredibly tight visceral combat In fairness this game is so new that it's impossible to see what kind of impact it leaves long term but in this moment it feels like a step up in every way and that's what we were looking for out of this game in short Sonia spent the last year adding to their list of reasons to buy a PS5 and it would be hard to argue they're not making a compelling list also it would be a shame if I didn't make honorable mentions of some of the excellent indie games that Sony has partnered with stray is without exaggeration one of my favorites this year I mean come on you play as a cat in this dystopian slum city trying to find your way out of it by doing cat things cat things it's excellent sifu is such a great third person action game it's got a ton of visual personality but this one is all gameplay with its punishing yet extremely rewarding combat roller drum is another one where the art style might catch your eye but it's the unique rollerblading shootout sequences that will keep you hooked here and honestly these are all drop in the bucket when you consider all the great indie games and larger third-party stuff that launched this year there is one point of contention to address though and that's still seeking the validation of buying a PS5 when a majority of these games are available on PS4 PC or they're just older games in general getting a facelift and that's absolutely true but it is important to understand we're just in a different place now in the games industry generational leaps are almost always defined as a graphical jump and while PS5 has a few examples the reality is we can have new hardware and even drop PS4 development if we want but the real limit is the remaining few Publishers that have the time resources and risk to make those kind of experiences they'll always be far and few between nowadays so when you have similar console architectures diminishing returns and most games not being visually demanding you get a lot of cross-gen releases that doesn't erode away the value of just how much better it can be when you're playing the PS5 version of these games though if you're looking for the best console games they're on PS5 and series X and if you're primarily in a PC then by all means Sony will be shipping first party titles on there with a slight delay but two years later the quality of life jump to low times frame rate resolution the console be in quiet dual sense features there is plenty here to enjoy but going into year three many Publishers will be moving onto current gen only so if the few first party Sony games don't seem compelling enough there might be a lot more reasons coming soon when it comes to the PlayStation 5 user experience we saw that year one was largely about addressing things that should have been there on launch day and In fairness it was a completely new UI that likely saw some development setbacks from the pandemic but that's a lot of what year one was since then we've seen two major system software updates and this is where we can see Sony's now getting into highly requested features and also making some adjustments to things that were already there based on feedback and Telemetry the company has behind the scenes in terms of requested features variable refresh rate and 1440p support was added a much welcomed addition that helps place the console in a better spot with more and more High refresh displays hitting the market though the vrr support did hit a small snag where it messed with some TVs that automatically enabled Auto low latency mode but that was addressed in a later update 1440p is a solid option that has improved anti-aliasing and super sampling when a game runs above that resolution but the caveat here is vrr is disabled at 1440p so hopefully that's also addressed sometime early next year Sony also readjusted the party system earlier in the year so it's more like how it was before they messed with it on PS4 prior to ps5's launch so now it's set up more to where you can do open and close parties good to have that back they also launched voice commands in English-speaking countries and that works reasonably well a PlayStation start God of War Ragnarok okay gameless are a way to organize your game Library which is nice to have but it's also not exactly the same as folders where that would be very handy to pin under the home screen the thing I'm a big fan of is the complete overhaul trophies I've seen since launch they went from boring cards and a horizontal list to a proper vertical one and a single trophy card for you to easily check when you're playing a game and you can also track and Pen trophies to this card too this is exactly how it should have been the really big thing Sony has been adjusting though is the activity card system I've done more in-depth videos on this recently and with the last major update it's becoming clear that Sony's not seeing these things get used like they were expecting which isn't exactly shocking since in my one year review I had mentioned I was not using the card system at all and this confirms to me that no one is what Sony has done is now tied the card system directly into the Game Hub so the default option is to resume or start activity encouraging users to make use of these the problem though is that cards simply aren't reliable not necessarily because they don't work but that the behavior of them is not consistent before Sony launched this console they talked about how you could use cards to jump directly into a part of a game instead of starting it normally that would be great but for whatever reason there's no developer mandate for them to do that the majority of games that utilize the card system just act like a normal boot or sometimes they skip Splash screens but not menus or sometimes they skip the first menu but they make you select a save file and if you can find a game that does it it will take you right to gameplay essentially Sony gave developers interesting tools without setting guidelines on how they should be used now I'm not implying Sony should be forcing these on developers just something more like hey if you want to use the card system that's great here's what they have to do you mandate the behavior not the feature if I can't rely on them to do the same thing every time they'll never be a habit and pushing them into the Game Hub where it's like to play game buttons right next to each other is not the answer it's even stranger when you consider there was a recent update that Consolidated activities into one single player and one multiplayer card which in my mind reads like you're submitting to the idea that people don't use them if you're going to hide them behind an additional button press I actually didn't mind the row of activities on the control center the problem was always how they were used and thankfully when developers do take full advantage they are insanely useful especially PS Plus cam help which I'm still a big fan of anyway we can also mention Sony is outright retiring the accolades feature because if you thought cards weren't used this one had cobwebs all over them I assume we'll have an update sometime next year that removes this from user profiles speaking of which there's still a lot on the way Discord voice chat should be coming sometime next year and like I mentioned earlier there's no folders vrr is disabled with 1440p a lot of people still want themes or at least custom backgrounds to come back so there's still work to be done but one thing I can say is I always did like the PS5 UI design I think the general look feel and Foundation is great it's fast Snappy responsive but certain aspects of it are going in the wrong direction [Music] admittedly I don't think there's too much to add here with the Dual sense and 3D audio I still feel very confident in saying the Dual sense is not only the best PlayStation controller so far but it's up there as one of the best all around and it's been great to see the haptics and triggers actually catch on developers have used them quite often and tears later I still find them to be genuinely additive to the overall experience if anything I can provide a long-term update right now I daily drive this black one that has held up quite well obviously it's not from launch but it's from the first batch of black dual Sun's controller so it has the older springs for the triggers and outside of some small cosmetic imperfections it's fine no stick drifting haptics and triggers are good it's always worth pointing out that these things do have an expected wear and tear rate depending on your play time and that could be a decade or just a few years so assuming there's no premature failures you should be good for a while 3D audio continues to be hit or miss but I do appreciate that Sony has made efforts here to ensure users are accurately setting their 3D audio profile so in settings you can toggle between different sounds or hear the demo tracks from only one side to figure out more easily what setting works best for you then you can listen and compare with stereo audio to see if it sounds different the only real issue is turning on 3D audio for games that don't support it that can often lead to a lesser experience with some tininess coming in I'm surprised there hasn't been an option yet that automates this so 3D audio is only active when a game supports it [Music] this past year was a big one because after years of expecting that PlayStation now would be Consolidated into PS plus it finally happened Sony announced that they would be launching an all-new PlayStation Plus based on three subscription tiers that would be essential extra and premium PS plus essential is more or less the same PS plus we've always known it includes share play cloud storage game help online play exclusive packs discounts the monthly games and the PS plus collection for PS5 owners it's the extra and premium tier that are new additions where a large portion of the PlayStation Now library has migrated over so for the PS plus extra tier this gives you access to a game catalog of roughly 400 games it's mostly comprised of PS4 titles but Sony also finally added native PS5 versions as well and for the premium tier this includes a selection of game Trials so you can try before you buy and also Cloud streaming so you can stream the majority of games available on the service except PS5 ones you also get access to a Classics catalog which bumps the total number of games in your subscription to roughly 800. the classic AMS range from emulated PS1 to and PSP games to streaming only PS3 titles and games that got PS4 remasters it's a little strange how they've organized this since PS now had all these games in one library but Sony has now split them into two on the new plus and they decided to take any PS4 game that were remasters or re-releases of PS3 or PSP games and throw those behind premium although it does make sense and Sony even has laid these out clearly on the PS plus menu so to start off this was never meant to be a direct Game Pass competitor per se Sony's approach is a larger catalog of games that include both old and relatively new titles whereas Microsoft's Game Pass has a few hundred Gams at any given time but the big focus is launching games day and date on that service Sony has been forthcoming on this that's not what they want to do but the new plus is a complimentary subscription that can give you a deep catalog of games to play at your leisure and for the extra tier it does provide an undeniably Great Value here in the US the monthly fee is 14.99 but if you pay a year up front it's 99.99 at any point as an essential member you can also pay a prorate fee to convert your remaining time to extra really it's the monthly support we're seeing here that's been fantastic PS Now monthly updates were quite frankly abysmal some months Sony would only add three to six games on average but every month so far since the May June PS plus relaunch there's been more than a dozen games all good re recent titles varied genres PS5 native games it's substantially better than PS now the real problem is PlayStation Plus premium the game Trials are certainly a nice perk but it's the streaming and classic library that leaves a lot to be desired to start the streaming infrastructure here is exactly the same as PS now this relaunch didn't do anything under the hood so if you never had a good experience streaming games on PS Now with image quality or latency this isn't going to be any different and that also means a large portion of your library is rendered useless as PS3 games can only be streamed we've gone over many times why PS3 is streaming only there's a very real valid reason why it's been this way but it is getting to the point where we have to ask how long they'll continue using the same PS3 server blades that just don't seem to provide a good enough experience and that's the same for PS4 games streaming them is not great and why would you anyway you can download them locally so streaming just isn't really a worthwhile perk here also if I could add one Sony relaunch PS plus they removed a handful of PS3 titles from the service only to now slowly re-add them as as if they're new truly baffling that leaves us with the classics library of PS4 remasters and locally emulated PS1 to and PSP games the actual Classics output has been massively disappointing launching with only a few PS1 games and one PSP the monthly updates have done nothing to help this with some months not having any new PS1 or PSP games and for PS2 if we want to be technical the ones on the service right now are the ones from the 2016 to 2017 PS2 program where they were re-released on PS4 with trophy support meaning that we have not seen any new PS2 games since then to make matters worse some of these games have issues running on PS5 via backwards compatibility it seemed really exciting at first to have the prospect of Sony finally revisiting classic games in a meaningful way adding them on PS5 allowing you to buy them honoring original purchases the pitch sounded awesome but then all of this happened and also some games are locked behind premium with no option to buy them or having your original PS1 Classic on PS3 purchase being honored though I do believe that's a publisher decision that's not necessarily Sony's Fault In fairness premium is not much more of an Ask above extra if you pay for the year up front it's 119.99 USD so 20 more basically but that just illustrates how even a minor cost difference isn't really Justified here but to summarize the new PS plus is indeed much better than PS now the consolidation always made sense and I think it works well here it's just premium that could do much much better [Music] I think there's something to be said about Sony interactive entertainment as its own category here because if there's one thing that really stands out it's the overall PlayStation business and how they've been viewed the past one or two years take it from someone that keeps their fingers on the pulse of this company and their consumers there's a lot of scrutiny on Sony nowadays some of which is valid and some that's overblown it doesn't help that the company has been poor at communication or really their lack of communicating I think a big part of that stems from Sony just not actively participating in events like E3 Gamescom Paris Games Week TGs these big media events where before we can look at them and predictably expect PlayStation will be there to say something that's no longer the case they follow the Nintendo formula and just announce things whenever they're ready and even when we expect some kind of big live stream it's not a guarantee instead it's the occasional state of play live stream but mostly Playstation blog updates and tweets which I think does get fans a bit restless thinking Sony isn't doing or saying much and when you have any kind of bad press go out or a rumor that hasn't been confirmed yet a negative connotation can just date but again there's always valid criticisms so how has Sony done this past year with PS5 and the overall PlayStation business I'd say business as usual no pun intended what I mean is not much has changed from 2021 by that time it was clear Sony was investing heavily into the PlayStation business they've been expanding in a massive way all their first party studios are growing and taking on multiple projects and we know that many of those titles are going to be live service games an area that Sony has always been lacking in so much so that one of their major 2022 Acquisitions was Bungie and that acquisition was specifically for their expertise in Live service games Bungie will continue operations as an independent subsidiary under Sie and publish games wherever they want but will closely integrate and share knowledge with Sony's other teams for their live service titles Sony also acquired Haven from the Montreal Bay Studio that's also working on aps-5 live service game and finally they acquired Savage game studios a new mobile game studio for their newly formed PlayStation Studios mobile Division and this is all expansion it's been outlined on many occasions that they will continue doing big budget narrative single player games on top of what are meant to be growth vectors for the company if it will pan out remains to be seen on the flip side we have a Sony today that again aren't the best communicators the acai president and CEO Jim Ryan has so far not exactly been seen in a positive light but PS5 thus far has been a successful in-demand console he's doing his job and he strikes me as somebody that has clearly done well but does have Tunnel Vision on the 80 20 rule only focusing on what helps the bottom line most without evaluating the importance of Goodwill initiatives another thing to consider this past year is the unfortunate price increase of PS5 and most markets outside of the US Sony was one of the first Publishers and the only platform holder to raise prices on their games and they've become the first to raise prices on their consoles a situation that is definitely abnormal in the console business the thing is we all know what's happening right now with Rising costs and goods energy and of course inflation we're now seeing that more Publishers are raising prices on their games and both Microsoft and Nintendo opening up the possibility of raising prices as well in an Ideal World I'd prefer Sony eat the cost and keep PS5 as affordable as possible but it doesn't seem like that's going to happen for them and now others it's not a great situation all around but a consequence nonetheless so to wrap things up PlayStation 5 is seeing time do exactly what time does best to consoles add more and more value if you recall from my one year review I mentioned that the default suggestion with new console seems to always be just wait you don't need it now there's no games and it's not like that's bad advice but I just didn't agree with that suggestion this time around sometimes we can say yeah that new console is great it's worth getting right now and PS5 absolutely qualified for that so when you have another year of great games one that might be considered generation defining we can safely say two years later PS5 is shaping up to be a great machine oddly enough there is some regression like the price increase or the system updates which have made questionable changes to activity cards but overall the system is still in a great place especially with PS Plus finally revamped and offering a good value on the extra tier now it's a matter of what happens in the next 12 months because we're expecting PlayStation VR 2 a revised p es5 model big game releases and new game announcements it's going to be very busy and with PS5 stock finally improving the timing couldn't be better thank you so much for watching this review hopefully you found something in here that's uh useful or at the very least thought provoking about ps5's progress thus far and that's the key takeaway for me is that you know if we compare it to other platforms and certainly previous PlayStations like PS4 launch align it to PS3 even PS2 I just feel like the progress has been really positive and there's just so much here to enjoy and play even amongst all the remasters ports cross jump stuff it's just been such an engaging platform and consoles typically only get better from here so that's why I've really been enjoying PS5 at this point but um either way again thank you and if you haven't just yet please consider subscribing for the best PlayStation news reviews and updates that are here on YouTube you can also follow me on Twitter at mysticryon and that is it I will see you all in my next video you take it easy foreign [Music]

Channel: Mystic

Views: 326,289

Keywords: PS5, PlayStation 5, PS5 games, PS5 gameplay, PS5 game play, PlayStation 5 gameplay, PS5 controller, DualSense, PS5 news, PS5 exclusives, PS5 rumors, PS5 rumor, PS5 Review, PlayStation 5 Review, DualSense Review, New PS Plus, PSPlus, PlayStation Plus, PS Plus Extra, PS Plus Premium, PS Plus Review, New PS Plus Review, PlayStation Plus Review, PS5 game review, Sony, SIE

Id: hPN1Jl-0VQU

Length: 25min 52sec (1552 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 16 2022