PS5
Credit: SonyWe saw the first PS5 commercial the other day, and it was revealing both for what it showed, and what it didn’t. There was no gameplay to be seen, part of a longstanding Sony tradition of weird live-action ads, and the company didn’t put a focus on graphics either. Three features stole the spotlight at the end: Haptic Feedback, Adaptive Triggers, and 3D Audio. All three of these are going to be very tough to communicate to consumers ahead of a presumed November launch.
Haptic feedback and other controller-related improvements have been a big part of Sony’s messaging surrounding PS5 since the beginning, so much that the Dualsense was actually the first thing the company showed us about the console, long before the form factor of the box itself. And on the surface, it sounds cool: I’m a little skeptical mostly because I wonder to what degree this stuff will actually be implemented in games, but still, sounds cool.
The same is true of 3D Audio: sounds cool, and I’d love to see it implemented in a splashy first-party game. But I’m not going to get an idea of how well it works watching an ad on my TV or my computer.
The obvious problem is that the best, and arguably only, way to actually understand how well these features will work is to get in front of a PS5 and get a Dualsense in your hands. Which, in a normal year, would be perfectly doable: hundreds of journalists would have already done so at E3, fans would have seen it at other events, and presumably Sony could start setting up kiosks at physical retailers where people could get their hands on a controller and try out 3D audio.
It is not a normal year.
COVID-19 has thrown a wrench in just about every plan on the Earth, and video games are no different. And I can’t help but feel like Sony’s haptic-focused PS5 selling points are severely compromised by the fact that so few people will actually be able to try this thing for themselves. Geoff Keighley did a segment on the Dualsense a little while back, but scattered demos are no substitute for much broader exposure.
The same could arguably be said about the more traditional, visual-focused selling points. Features like 4K and 60 FPS are best demoed in controlled environments where Sony knows what sort of display is going to be used, and that sort of thing. But visuals still translate better than haptics in a TV commercial. For the most part, consumers are going to be taking these things on faith. Which isn’t impossible, but it’s still challenging: nobody can wander through a store, pick up a demo and have their minds blown by some sort of incredible haptic feedback.
It’s just another small way that COVID-19 has completely disrupted every aspect of the economy. The video game industry has arguably seen an upside in some places, but as game delays and problems like these show, it is far from immune to the downsides.
The Link LonkAugust 22, 2020 at 08:20PM
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Sony Can’t Actually Show Us Any Of These Big 3 PS5 Selling Points - Forbes
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