Games Inbox: The legacy of the PS4, PlayStation on PC, and Astro Bot: Rescue Mission 2 hopes

metro.co.uk:

The Friday letters page worries about a games drought that lasts all of 2023, as one reader wants to play more games like Limbo.

To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Classic console So, Sony is finally getting ready to retire the PlayStation 4, eh? I don’t have a problem with that. The pandemic has lengthened its software support past what it would have got normally and it can retire knowing that it was super successful and has a great collection of games.

Working out its true legacy will take a bit of hindsight but for me it is a true classic console and one of the best. I think for that to be true it has to hit a few different criteria. For a start, it has to be popular and have a good range of games, and I think the PlayStation 4 pretty obviously does that.

But I feel it also has to have an influence on the industry as a whole and on the company that made it. I think that’s true too. PlayStation 4 was the moment that Sony came of age in terms of its first party games – just look at the line-up for the PlayStation 3, it’s much worse.

The games were so successful they forced Microsoft to change direction and accept that first party games were one of the main selling points for a console. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that the PlayStation 4 directly influenced Microsoft into opening their war chest to buy Bethesda, Activision Blizzard, and the rest.

Things will never be the same after the PlayStation 4, but whether they’ll be better or worse remains to be seen…Xane

The future of consoles So the PC is getting its first PlayStation 5 game, eh? Had to happen sooner or later and I’m not surprised it’s Returnal. The next step is for games to be released on PlayStation 5 and PC on the same