What happens when you’re outselling your competition 3 to 1? Well, this weird conference is the answer. There were some highs, lows, and definitely some moments that just left me scratching my head.

The Good:

PlayStation came into this conference with one goal in mind and that was to show off the games that they have coming out soon(ish) by showcasing The Last of Us 2, Spider-Man, Ghost of Tsushima, and Death Stranding. There were some others that managed to make the short list like Nioh 2, Resident Evil 2, and a few others and honestly, everything they showed off, especially the big four looked incredible. The Last of Us Part 2 looks to be one of the most impressive games that’s ever been made and I really don’t feel like that’s an overstatement.

Once you get past the games though, there’s the actual conference and while I’ll mention the parts that I had issues with in a second, it’s important to give praise to PlayStation for the parts of the conference that were really great. Once the conference got up and running, I really thought it was an excellent show that even did a great job with it’s transistions using the game Dreams for the actual transitions for the show.

The Ugly:

Usually with these posts I try and discuss the good, the bad, and lastly the ugly, but as far as I’m concerned there really wasn’t anything bad about this show. There was however, some ugly. The beginning of the show starts in a standing room only recreation of a setting from The Last of Us Part 2. It’s very cool. Before we see gameplay of Last of Us though, a man is called out on stage to play the banjo for what seemed like an 3 hours. He was very talented and I very much respect his skills, but with that being said, this nonsense of playing live music while not showing gameplay has to stop now.

To make things even worse, after PlayStation had all of E3 eating out of the palm of its hand with that Last of Us trailer, they stopped the show so that the audience could then leave one room and go to another. All of the momentum, all of the excitement, GONE. Had they just had something planned for the people watching at home, this transisition would have been fine, but it really was just a group of fine PlayStation employees talking about what they just saw and then asking a few God of War questions.

And lastly, the thing that hurt the most with the show was that it just ended. There was no big “and one last thing”. There was no big moment from the final trailer being shown that made you think that the show was coming to an end. No one even came out to the audience and thanked them for coming. The show just… ended. And this ending was a real shame because after that suspect opening, they really had turned things around and only needed to stick the landing to guarantee that much like Ubisoft and Microsoft had great shows.

Conclusions:

Despite the show not being as great as it could have been, at the end of the day the thing that matters most are the games and games are something PlayStation has plenty of. While Microsoft showed off a large quantity of games, a lot of them will eventually be available on PlayStation while the big four titles that PlayStation showed off are PlayStation 4 exclusive. So yes, they had a worse show than Microsoft, but ultimately, I don’t really think it matters.