Chris Roper | Blog

Editor-in-Chief

Joined IGN: Sept. 2002

08 Highlight: Surviving year one of parenthood.

Greg Miller | Blog

Editor

Joined IGN: March 2007

08 Highlight: Pon-Pon-Pata-Pon!

Jeff Haynes | Blog

Editor

Joined IGN: Feb. 2006

08 Highlight: Obama is elected president.

Ryan Clements | Blog

Associate Editor

Joined IGN: July 2007

08 Highlight: Girlfriend visits.

Welcome to IGN's 2008 Year in Review for the PlayStation family. Over the next seven pages we're going to cover the highest highs and lowest lows, the biggest news and highest reviews of 2008. We're going to look back at the year's events, like E3, GDC and TGS, and see how well (or how little) Sony pushed the systems. You'll find a list of the year's highest rated titles, as determined by both the IGN editors and our readers. We'll break down the biggest news of the year and provide a few tips and tricks on the hottest games. And finally, we'll take a look at 2009 and see what's in store for Sony's systems. So sit back, pour yourself a nice beverage and have a read.

State of the Platform

2008 was quite the interesting year for all things PlayStation. The PS3 has just wrapped up its second full year of existence, and what a year it was, with an incredible amount of fantastic releases. The PSP had its share of stellar titles, though the amount of games we saw released for the system each month could be counted on your fingers, sometimes just one hand. The aging PS2 just saw the release of Persona 4, which will probably go down as the last great game for the system, all but signaling its unofficial death.

Yes, it was an interesting year to be a PlayStation fan, though not all for good reasons. Fortunately though, much of the PlayStation 3's year was quite positive. We saw a ton of huge games hit the system, including a handful that have been long-touted as reasons to pick up the console. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots hit shelves this past June and turned out to be one of the most astonishing games we've seen in, well, ever.

LittleBigPlanet was released in late October after being delayed for a week due to "sensitive issues" regarding the game's soundtrack. It too proved to live up to its incredibly high promises and the community continues to surprise us with the amazingly unique and inventive levels that we see every day.

The list of big releases goes on and on. Resistance 2 continued Nathan Hale's story and brought an immense online experience to gamers, while titles like Grand Theft Auto IV and Fallout 3 were amazing titles in their own right.

But fortunately for us all, the good news wasn't just about the games themselves. Sony made plenty of updates to the PlayStation 3 platform in general through numerous firmware updates. Things like in-game Cross Media Bar support finally let us manage and use our Friends list while playing any game, which was most certainly welcome. Biggest of all though was the addition of Trophies, Sony's take on the Xbox 360's Achievements. Coming in Gold, Silver, Bronze and the coveted Platinum, they work to increase your overall gamer level and have already proven to reintroduce older titles to gamers who missed them the first time around, like the excellent Super Stardust HD.

But, Sony's still not done yet. We have yet to see voice support required in every game, which is a shame. Custom soundtracks are built into the SDK for developers to use, but real-world use is far and between right now. The PlayStation Store has some great downloadable titles, but there were many weeks this year where we didn't see new games while the 360 and Wii got new (or classic) titles. Given the amount of games released on Xbox Live Arcade specifically that could and should also be on the PlayStation Store, it looks like Sony has some work to do to convince developers to spend the time and investment in porting their titles to the PSN.

On the PlayStation Portable front, we're seeing a decline in the total number of games released each year. Numbering well under 100 for 2008, gamers don't have anywhere near the selection that you'll find on the PS3 or its main competitor, the Nintendo DS. That's not to say that there weren't great titles this year for the system; on the contrary, looking at the top handful of titles makes this seem like the PSP's best year yet. God of War: Chains of Olympus, Crisis Core: Final Fantasty VII, Patapon and a handful of other titles proved that the system can be home to phenomenal games. Now if only more developers would make titles for it we might have a great system on our hands.

However, the lack of software isn't the only thing missing from the PSP. Over here in the US, we still haven't seen the release of the GPS add-on, nor the foldable keyboard promised so long ago. These devices would do well to help expand the PSP's non-game functionality beyond a standard media player, but where are they?



Over on the PS2 front, things are grim. The system is clearly on its deathbed and is struggling to take in one last gasp of air before it keels over and dies. It's been on life support for a long time now, with things like the LEGO Batman pack helping to put the hardware back in the news. But why is the price still so high? Pretty much everyone who would have ever wanted a PS2 has bought one by now, so why not drop the price to $99 and make it something of an impulse buy (in the realm of electronics and gaming, at least). Persona 4 looks to be the system's swan song, a fantastic eulogy for the system, but Sony should starting piling the dirt on it already.