I struggle to understand how any hardcore game enthusiast could look at the games shown, and not think the majority of them look promising. I read several comments in this thread which could be paraphrased "All of these new IPs just look the same, I just want my classic comfort titles back". It's kind of the old man yelling at clouds reaction. Not willing to get enthusiastic about the promise of new games, in an industry which already struggles to give us new things.
I remember some of you guys writing off Stellar Blade in the last State of Play like their was nothing interesting at all shown, and it went on to smash sales records in April. It was a fantastic success, and I'm happy that it did so well. You gotta love to see it. I want more of that for the games industry, but it's got to start with at least some degree of optimism and open-mindedness on the part of the consumer. You can't just chase after the past all of the time and demand more rehash of Uncharted or Sly Cooper. The new games look good, we should give them a chance. I think it's healthy to have some optimism and actually want to enjoy new things. It's a novel idea, but I believe in it.
I'll admit I'm even a bit close-minded still when it comes to what I call "live-service slop", because I assume that I can't have fun with a live-service game. That's based on nothing but a stupid stubbornness. However, there's plenty of single player games here, and those games literally hold up, because they don't get shut down in a year's time. That's what I want to see. Anyone making a single player game, I'm all for looking deeper into it than just the surface-level reveal trailer. There's no doubt in my mind that these will be good games, and there's a lot of folks too stubborn to want to give them a chance. They didn't see some title they wanted to see brought back, and so the rest of it is "not interesting" and the whole thing branded as disappointing.
It's one thing to be open-minded, but I think there's also a thing that there are so many games coming out there is just no way to justify being excited for all of them, so for me, I can only show interest in the games that have direct appeal to me, and established brands I love are gonna take precedent. I always look forward to cool new games, I just beat Dave the Diver yesterday, it was dope, but there wasn't a whole lot of new at this showing and the ones that are new, are questionable.
Behemoth is new, but it's a PSVR 2 game, so most people will never play it. Concord is new, but it's in a heavily over-saturated genre, the same boat with Marvel Rivals, and I don't really need another hero shooter. Ballad of Antara and Infinity Nikki are new, but they are F2P games and therefore time sinks and I already play a few F2P/live service games. Concord and Marvel Rivals are going to fit into this part too, same for Path of Exile 2. There's only so much time for games like that. Where Winds Meet is new, but this type of action adventure game is hitting some pretty high saturation levels itself and I can't and don't really want to play them all. That sorta just leaves Astro Bot, which most folks were happy to see.
People like new things, but people also want stuff that their system is known for. I'm not one of the folks outright hating on the PS5, it's been okay enough for me, but I'm not gonna deny that it's been kinda lacking and this State of Play didn't do Sony a lot of favors.