Five years from launch the PS5 is a roaring success, so why doesn't it feel like it? The answer is surprisingly simple

Five years is always a strange point in the life of modern consoles. It's far enough into things to feel like we should have peaked, like we're maybe even over the crest and heading towards the next generation; not far enough to feel like we can say anything really definitive. Which brings us nicely to the slightly unusual position of the PlayStation 5, which is now five years old.

It's unusual because, well, on paper it's had such a stormer we can probably say something quite definitive already. Microsoft, its long-suffering rival, has ceded so much ground, not even bothering with the mid-gen hardware refresh that the "Series" name implied, that it's effectively out of the console race altogether (and potentially, depending on what its future, console-slash-PC thing is, out of it for good). Nintendo is continuing to operate on its own internal logic, a different plane of existence. And so Sony, with continuously excellent PS5 sales to boast, is essentially jogging to the finish line, the only runner left in what was barely a two-horse race to begin with.

In fact, the PlayStation 5's trajectory mirrors the PlayStation 4's almost exactly. And the general shape of the generation has mirrored it too - if not as exactly, at least pretty closely: a low-risk, games-focused home console; a VR headset; a mid-gen Pro edition and before that, a sort-of-Slim. So why, whenever I chat to anyone about the PS5's life so far, am I typically met with a waft of lukewarm praise or shrug of plain ambivalence? Why hasn't it captivated people - at least me - in the way the PS4 did? The numbers say the PS5 is a roaring success. Why doesn't it feel like it?

PlayStation 5 Official Console Reveal | PS5 Reveal Event

I have a few theories. For one, those big hardware beats of the generation - the VR headset, the Pro, the not-Slim, have landed with a bit of a thud. PSVR 2 was abandoned the day it arrived, a lovely piece of kit that came bundled with a pack-in copy of corporate sunk cost. The £700 Pro (stand not included) was historically expensive, and the Slim, normally a discount option for the masses, was as much as a base console. Then prices actually went up.

That leads into another big factor here. The PS5 released at the height of the pandemic, when gaming was all-consuming. The impact of this has been far-reaching, constraining supply at first and then, with the surge of post-re-opening inflation (combined with war and tariffs) that added to an upwards spiral of costs. And then there's the less tangible cost. The fact that naturally in the years since, the people who were locked inside - in particular Gen Z, both the group whose social years were most defined by social distancing and lockdowns, and the group considered the digital kingmakers of today - have a difficult relationship with the online world. Gen Z are a mercurial lot, hard to pin down, but if they're defined by anything it's the tension they constantly wrestle with, between an obsession with online life and a desire to escape it. In the simplest terms, it just means maybe the coolness of gaming, its trendiness, has been in slight decline, and so there are just fewer big, mainstream news-dominating moments for games than there were.

That's one theory. Another, probably more palatable one: maybe this is just gaming's wider malaise? A crackling nebula of factors behind that one, of course. The pandemic again, and peoples' relationships with digital media again, and interest rates and bad-judgement bets and mega-investments, inflating budgets and development times, an increasingly aggressive, invasive attention-and-engagement economy to compete with, and everything else. The outcome being: fewer big games, fewer big, breakout cultural hits, as a result of fewer developers. The unprecedented layoffs and cutbacks have finally started to hit the release schedule. And they create a sense, however intangible, that things are not going well, regardless of the sales. There's a growing realisation today that, come to think of it, profits for big companies on paper do not always directly translate to prosperity and joy in everyday people's lives.

One more: what about the diminishing returns of the hardware itself? The fact that, as was already discussed to death with the PS4 era, getting ever more pixels on the screen only gets you so far? The SSD was the big new thing this generation. It is genuinely transformative in letting you minimise games and resume them in a flash, and it genuinely makes new things possible - Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, of all games, remains a headline example. But those new things are often imperceptible by their nature because they rely on the absence of something: the lack of loading screens, the seamless transitions, the faster movement through the world. This generation - and to be clear, this is across into Xbox land as well - has been a bit like when I got a new phone. After five-ish years in 60hz land, I finally upgraded to one with a 120hz screen. The first day I was living in the future, smoother than smooth, scrolling for the sake of scrolling. The second day I forgot about it. The nature of these kinds of advances is that they only matter until you get used to them, and then they're no longer the new norm. They're just the norm.

But then, as I was trying to untangle all this, someone put it to me very simply. How many big exclusives has Sony had, since the PS5 launched? How does it compare to the first five years of the widely-revered era of the PS4? Maybe all of this, eventually, comes back to the games. And so naturally I spent a very long time making some spreadsheets.

Here's a pair of tables detailing all of the Sony-published games released on the PS4 in its first five years, first, and the same for the PS5 below. They're quite long, so please promise you'll keep reading when you get to the other side. The "proper exclusives" I've highlighted in bold - more on the criteria for that below.

Sony-Published PS4 Games	Release Date	Notes
Killzone: Shadow Fall	15th November 2013
Knack	15th November 2013
Resogun	15th November 2013	PS3, Vita Cross-Platform
The Playroom	15th November 2013
Doki-Doki Universe	2nd December 2013	PS3, Vita Cross-Platform
The Last of Us: Left Behind	29th July 2014	PS3 Cross-platform
Infamous Second Son	21st March 2014
MLB 14: The Show	6th May 2014	PS3, Vita Cross-Platform
Entwined	9th June 2014	PS3, Vita Cross-Platform
Killzone: Shadow Fall Intercept	5th August 2014
Hohokum	12th August 2014	PS3, Vita Cross-Platform
CounterSpy	19th August 2014	PS3, Vita Cross-Platform
Infamous First Light	26th August 2014
Driveclub	7th October 2014
SingStar	29th October 2014
SingStar: Ultimate Party	29th October 2014	PS3 Cross-Platform
LittleBigPlanet 3	18th November 2014	PS3 Cross-Platform
Super Stardust Ultra	10th February 2015	PS3 Remaster
The Order: 1886	20th February 2015
Helldivers	3rd March 2015	PS3, Vita Cross-platform
Bloodborne	24th March 2015
MLB 15: The Show	31st March 2015	PS3, Vita Cross-platform
Everybody's Gone to the Rapture	11th August 2015
Until Dawn	25th August 2015
Tearaway Unfolded	8th September 2015
Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection	7th October 2015	PS3 Remasters
Driveclub Bikes	27th October 2015
Fat Princess Adventures	5th December 2015
Guns Up!	5th December 2015
Hardware: Rivals	5th January 2016
Heavy Rain & Beyond Two Souls Collection	1st March 2016	PS3 Remasters
MLB The Show 16	29th March 2016	PS3 Cross-platform
Ratchet & Clank	12th April 2016
Alienation	26th April 2016
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End	10th May 2016
Shadow of the Beast	17th Mary 2016	Amiga remake
Kill Strain	12th July 2016
No Man's Sky	10th August 2016	Co-published, also on PC
Bound	16th August 2016
PlayStation VR Worlds	10th October 2016	PSVR
Driveclub VR	13th October 2016	PSVR
Here They Lie	13th October 2016	PSVR
Hustle Kings VR	13th October 2016	PSVR
RIGS: Mechanized Combat League	13th October 2016	PSVR
Super Stardust Ultra VR	13th October 2016	PSVR
The Playroom VR	13th October 2016	PSVR
Tumble VR	13th October 2016	PSVR
Until Dawn: Rush of Blood	13th October 2016	PSVR
The Tomorrow Children	25th October 2016
The Last Guardian	6th December 2016
Gravity Rush 2	18th January 2017
Nioh	7th February 2017
Horizon Zero Dawn	28th February 2017
MLB The Show 17	28th March 2017
Drawn to Death	4th April 2017
StarBlood Arena	11th April 2017	PSVR
Farpoint	16th May 2017	PSVR
Wipeout Omega Collection	6th June 2017	PS3, Vita Remasters
Air Force Special Ops: Nightfall	20th June 2017	PSVR
Honkowa Presents: Nogizaka46 VR Horror House	3rd July 2017	PSVR
That's You!	4th July 2017
Matterfall	15th August 2017
Uncharted: The Lost Legacy	22nd August 2017
Everybody's Golf	29th August 2017
Knack II	5th December 2017
Gran Turismo Sport	17th October 2017
No Heroes Allowed! VR	17th October 2017	PSVR
Hidden Agenda	24th October 2017
Knowledge is Power	24th October 2017
SingStar Celebration	24th October 2017
Stifled	31st October 2017
Jak and Daxter Bundle	28th November 2017	PS2 Remasters
The Inpatient	23rd January 2018	PSVR
Shadow of the Colossus Remake	6th February 2018	PS2 Remake
Bravo Team	6th March 2018	PSVR
Frantics	6th March 2018
World of Warriors	21st March 2018	Mobile port
MLB The Show 18	27th March 2018
God of War	20th April 2018
Detroit: Become Human	25th May 2018
Track Lab	21st August 2018	PSVR
Firewall: Zero Hour	28th August 2018	PSVR
Marvel's Spider-Man	7th September 2018
Astro Bot Rescue Mission	2nd October 2018	PSVR
Déraciné	6th November 2018	PSVR

Sony-Published PS5 Games	Release Date	Notes
Astro's Playroom	12th November 2020
Demon's Souls Remake	12th November 2020	PS3 Remake
Sackboy: A Big Adventure	12th November 2020	PS4 Cross-Platform
Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales	12th November 2020	PS4 Cross-Platform
Destruction AllStars	2nd February 2021
Nioh 2	5th February 2021	PS4 Remaster
The Nioh Collection	5th February 2021	PS4 Remasters
Returnal	30th April 2021
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart	11th June 2021
Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut	20th August 2021	PS4 Remaster
Ghost of Tsushima: Legends	3rd September 2021	PS4 Cross-Platform
Death Stranding: Director's Cut	24th September 2021	PS4 Remaster
Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection	28th January 2022	PS4 Remasters
Horizon Forbidden West	18th February 2022	PS4 Cross-Platform
Gran Turismo 7	4th March 2022	PS4 Cross-Platform
The Last of Us Part 1	2nd September 2022	PS4 Remake
God of War Ragnarök	9th November 2022	PS4 Cross-Platform
Horizon Call of the Mountain	22nd February 2023	PSVR2
Firewall Ultra	24th August 2023	PSVR2
Marvel's Spider-Man 2	20th October 2023
The Last of Us Part 2	19th January 2024	PS4 Remake
Helldivers 2	8th February 2024	Also on PC
Rise of the Ronin	22nd March 2024
Stellar Blade	26th April 2024
Concord	23rd August 2024	Also on PC, now unavailable
Astro Bot	6th September 2024
Until Dawn Remake	4th October 2024	Also on PC, PS4 Remake
My First Gran Turismo	6th December 2024	PS4 Cross-platform
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach	26th June 2025
Ghost of Yōtei	2nd October 2025

A couple things to note quickly. What I've counted for these tables is any game that was published by Sony Interactive Entertainment in most of the world (for example, Nioh is published by Sony everywhere but Japan, so it's in; several Call of Duty games are published by Sony only in Japan, so they're not). The game must have been released on that console alone, or just that console and PC, or cross-gen with Sony consoles only, for at least six months. And a "proper console exclusive", highlighted in bold, is when it's released only on that one console for at least six months, and so isn't cross-platform, or a VR-only game, or a remake, remaster, or port of a game already released elsewhere.

Here are the headline numbers: by that criteria, Sony published 86 console-exclusive games, 44 of those "proper" exclusives, for the PlayStation 4 in its first five years after launch. It published 30 console-exclusive games, 11 of those proper exclusives, in the same period for the PS5.

Before carrying on, a million caveats: I know this is a pretty arbitrary way of doing it, but since this is about the impact on how the PS5 is perceived in peoples' minds, I've attempted to match the criteria with the general spirit of what feels like a true exclusive, as opposed to the absolute letter of what might literally qualify it. Also, this misses out all of the many, many third party exclusives over the years - so many in fact, that when I started to do it that way, I realised I'd be here all week and would publish a table so long nobody would reach the end of it. I also think first-party and second-party exclusives are the truest representation of a platform-holder's approach anyway - a truer insight into what it considers worth making - so there are forces at work here beyond my laziness, too. Lastly, the lists are a little skewed by VR games, where Sony supported the PS4's PSVR quite heavily (20 games on the list), and almost totally ignored the PS5's PSVR 2 the second it launched (just two).

Even with all that in mind, the difference is quite stark, and I'd point in particular at that notion of "proper exclusive". Sony has, with its publishing offering on the PS5, played it really quite safe. One of its four launch-day exclusives was a remake; two were cross-platform. The fourth was the pack-in Astro's Playroom. Part of this is consumer-friendly, of course: cross-platform games means more people with access to playing them when new-generation consoles are at their most scarce and (until now!) their most expensive. And some early PS4 games were cross-platform too, even if Sony was bolder with the launch-day true-exclusives of, ahem, Killzone: Shadow Fall and Knack.

What we can actually, I think quite reliably, take from the lists above instead is this: that since the very beginning with the PS5, Sony has failed to publish much that is genuinely, authentically new.

Too many of its tentpoles have been sequels in established franchises. God of War Ragnarok, Ghost of Yotei, Horizon Forbidden West, Spider-Man 2, Death Stranding 2, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart and, depending how you define it, even Astro Bot. Too many others have been remasters, remakes, directors' cuts, upgrades. Things that are fine, as a more generous (if more expensive) version of standard backwards compatibility. In fact they're welcome, as part of the regular beat of invention and novelty. But they're mere luxury padding without it.

Again, caveats. Demon's Souls is a lavish remake of a genuine classic, for instance, just as Shadow of the Colossus was for the PS4. There are no other games exactly like Death Stranding 2, besides Death Stranding, and so discounting it as merely a sequel feels a little unfair. Helldivers 2 is a casualty of the arbitrary "not a proper exclusive" ruling by virtue of it coming out on PC at the same time, in a break from Sony's norm, and yet it was rightfully a phenomenon. And we still haven't talked about Returnal yet, arguably the best, certainly the most interesting, infatuating thing Sony has published in years.

But there's a nugget of truth here, and Returnal is in fact the perfect game to illustrate it. It's an uncooperative, capricious, cat-like game in its almost deliberate indifference to your success or failure as a player, a mix of some of the finest bullet hell work out there with the blink-fast capabilities of the console's SSD, the clicks and gurgles of the DualSense, the neon brightness in pinsharp precision made possible by its power. This is a next-gen video game, entirely new, inconsiderate of market trends, half-loathed even by people like me who like to go on about how much they love it. Probably not a mass-seller. And it's the only one of its kind.

The real message here. The slight ambivalence to the PS5, despite its undisputed status as victor of maybe the final true console war, its vast objective popularity - in terms of simply how many people bought it - is down to the lack of risks we've seen from this generation so far. You look down the PS4 list with that in mind and it starts to make sense, not just in the big swings - Driveclub, The Last Guardian, The Order: 1886, the blockbuster, HBO-style reboot of the teen-edgy God of War - but also in all the smaller things that dotted the calendar. Until Dawn, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, Gravity Rush 2, Alienation - even SingStar or That's You!, from now-closed studios Sony London and Wish here in the UK. The "interesting small-to-mid-tier game" is gone.

Even within the already-safe frame of sequels, remakes, and big franchises there's another form of safety - the form of the games themselves. Despite often being excellent, or at least pretty good individually, as a whole too much of Sony's catalogue falls into the category of HBOified third-person action games, often in open or pseudo-open worlds, often with a swathe of recurring mechanics and modes of play. There will always be third-party games of course - the most Returnal-like game I can think of is the equially uncooperative, yet magnetic Pacific Drive. And the point I'm about to make has been made many times before. But I will always be glad to repeat it: Sony built the PlayStation on weirdness, and it mustn't let that go.

Consider that, and all those other factors above start to pull together as one. The diminishing technical returns mean consoles today don't come with the wonder already baked in, by virtue of adding a dimension, a means of control, or a truly transformative shift in definition. The pandemic effect, its many knock-on effects, the wider industry malaise, all contribute to a natural, understandable, entirely business-logic-predictable aversion to creative risk. And so the PS5 has, still, been a success. It sells. Its games sell. But I'm not sure I can say it's captivated. For that, be it from the hardware or the games, we'd need something truly new.

This article has been updated to remove the MLB: The Show games from the PS5 column, as they were multi-platform releases, and for other minor table corrections.