May 30’s PlayStation State of Play was a bit underwhelming. There were a lot of duds but also some bright spots. YouTube users have clearly picked a winner and loser from the showcase, however.
X user Radec did some research on the YouTube like-to-dislike ratio for Concord and Astro Bot a few hours after the presentation, and it yielded some surprising results. You can check them out below:
As you can see, Concord had 1.4K likes to its 3.1K dislikes with 26K views, while Astro Bot had 11K likes to only 95 dislikes with 50K views.
12 hours later, the contrast between the two games became even greater:
The ratio is quite large, to say the least. It feels like gamers are really trying to tell Sony and PlayStation something.
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What can we gather from this information? Well, it appears PlayStation users did not like Concord, a live service game that looks like every other multiplayer online shooter with discount Guardians of the Galaxy characters. They did like Astro Bot, a vibrant single-player adventure that actually has an ending and celebrates PlayStation’s console, accessory, and character history.
It will be interesting to see if these YouTube votes translate to sales. If fans turn out for Astro Bot and drop Concord like a bad habit, perhaps Sony will realize generic-looking live service titles are not the future. Unique games that don’t require a daily grind used to be PlayStation’s bread and butter during previous generations, and I’d like that to be what defines the PlayStation 5. I worry this is all going to lead to more studio closures and PS4 remasters. I would love to be proven wrong, though. Please prove me wrong.
