Sony President Yoshida Disappointed In Low PS4 Game Review Scores

Reviews are in for the Playstation 4’s exclusive launch titles, and it’s not a pretty sight. Sony Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida recently spoke with GamesIndustry.biz about the Playstation 4 and expressed his thoughts on these early reviews. 

“Yeah, it’s disappointing to see some of the low scores. I haven’t spent enough time reading reviews, but I would characterize them as mixed. And with this launch there are lots of games coming out, so the media must be very busy going through the games quickly, and especially since the online functionality wasn’t ready until in the last couple days. So we have to look at how much time they spend on what aspect of the games and how that may be contributing to some of the lower scores.”

Most of the Killzone: Shadow Fall reviews been a mixed bag, with a few sites giving it high marks, and others slapping it with mediocre grades. Knack, on the other hand, is absolutely getting hosed in the review department, being dealt 2s and 4s in some cases, and averaging a 59 on Metacritic. The launch title receiving the most praise, however, is Resogun, which has received some near perfect marks. 

Yoshida brings up an interesting point in regards to the rush to get reviews for anticipated games out as soon as possible. Apparently, he feels that if some of the critics spent more time with these games that they would begin to like them more. 

“It’s disappointing but I don’t think it’s worrisome for the launch of the system. I’ve played through all of our games, Killzone, Knack and Resogun, and I totally enjoyed playing through these games. I’m now on my second run of Knack and Resogun at a higher difficulty – these games really grow on you when you play more. I’m very confident that once you purchase these games and play, you’ll be happy that you’ve done so.”

Obviously Yoshida has to continue to promote his product regardless of the negative critiques, but there is some truth to the fact that a game can grow on you the more you play it. This is kind of a controversial issue with critics, with some sharing a similar belief as Yoshida’s, and others with the opinion that if a game doesn’t grab them in the first two hours then there’s something wrong with it. For me, it all depends on the game. 

Despite his issues with press reaction, Yoshida still remains confident in the Playstation 4’s future. 

“The PS4 generation is going to be the transitional generation. In a sense, it’s the completion of the evolution of the strong 3D capable consoles, but at the same time it’s at the maturing phase of our network platform and the beginning of our new service phase, like our cloud gaming that we are preparing to launch next year. And the use of mobile devices is part of our ecosystem. So all that considered, and the difficulty we had at the launch of the PS3, and very strong competition especially in North America, that made us really revisit everything we’ve been doing and redefine the company, almost like we’re re-entering this industry. Even across our teams, I think you now get more consistent messages [about PlayStation] compared to past generations, because we talk a lot more and get a lot of input [from all the teams] on different decisions.”

We won’t know for certain just how well the Playstation 4 will do until it’s officially launched tomorrow in North America, but I have a feeling that these harsh reviews to the exclusive games won’t be enough to deter gamers from picking up the console. After all, there are new Battlefield and Call of Duty games available for it, not to mention Assassin’s Creed, FIFA and Madden. We shall see. 

Thanks, VG247, GamesIndustry.biz