Shack Chat: What's your reaction to the September PlayStation 5 Showcase?

This week, Sony finally stopped beating around the bush and gave PlayStation fans what they've been waiting for. They offered up a PS5 price and a PS5 release date. They also showed off almost a dozen games, a handful of which will be available at launch. And if that sounds like they showed off a lot, it does, but they were also missing some critical details.

For this week's Shack Chat, the Shacknews staff gets into their impressions of the September PlayStation 5 Showcase. A few of us went off the board and rambled on about the aftermath, which is understandable, because... well... we'll let them explain it in their own words.

Question: What's your reaction to the September PlayStation 5 Showcase?

Pre-order details may vary - Ozzie Mejia, Wario64 stan #1

The presentation itself was great. I'm not going to complain about the PS5 Showcase itself, but it's the aftermath that everybody's talking about and that everybody rightfully has grievances with. It was all the chaos that followed surrounding pre-orders and a bunch of details that nobody got unless they followed Geoff Keighley. It was the note that pre-orders would start the next day, except pre-orders started within hours. It was people within PlayStation that said months ago that people would have "plenty of notice" before pre-orders go up and instead had to watch as stores haphazardly threw up pre-orders. And it was me spending two hours hitting the Checkout button on my Best Buy before the site finally told me, "SOLD OUT! LOL!" I missed the AEW Dynamite main event for this! (Go watch that, by the way. Trent's mom might be the best character on all of these shows.) God help anyone who wasn't following Wario64 on Twitter.

Oh, the games? Yeah, they're great. Spider-Man? Cool, cool. Final Fantasy XVI? That's... wait, where's my FF7 Remake Part 2? (One thing at a time, Ozzie! Focus!) Anyway, come on, man. How can I focus on the games when the pre-order fiasco leaves such a sour taste in my mouth?

I'm a simple man - Donovan Erskine, Elite Gamer

I'm a simple man, I see Miles Morales, I'm in. The extended look at gameplay we got to see from Spider-Man: Miles Morales was super impressive. The story looks, great, I dig the Harlem setting, and that combat... oh, the combat. It looks just as fluid and impactful as the combat in Marvel's Spider-Man, but with Miles' unique fighting style, as well as his electric and cloaking abilities. Wake me up in November, please.

Final Fantasy 16! - Blake Morse, Reviews Editor

THEY STARTED THE SHOWCASE WITH FINAL FANTASY 16!!!

Sony must think I'm a clown - Chris Jarrard, Usually likes being a clown

I experienced lots of emotions during the Playstation Showcase on Wednesday ranging from excitement to utter disappointment, and only a third of those emotions came during the actual show. I was excited to see Spider-Man: Miles Morales as it was hyped to be next-gen PS5-only and then the demo ended up being only 30hz followed by the reveal that it was just cross-gen after all. FF16 was shown with a disclaimer that the video was captured on PC with the intention of emulating PS5, only to have Squeenix come out after the show and declare it won't be on PC. Demon's Souls looked good, especially in its 4K 60Hz trailer that indicated it would arrive on PC (which Sony then said was not true upon removing said trailer). Horizon Forbidden West wasn't on the show, only to be revealed on a blog right after as a cross-gen game. Geoff Keighley was on Twitter seconds after the live show giving out useful information that should have been part of the PlayStation Showcase itself.

More dumb stuff happened, but there's no way any normal person could leave Wednesday night with solid information about what exactly you would get on console launch day unless you followed 12 different Twitter accounts and hunted down a bunch of blogs and corporate error corrections. At least Sony is going to allow us PS Plus users to play a few PS4 games on PS5 for launch day? Hooray? What happened to backwards compatibility?

Can't wait to cheer on a bunch of remasters of 2017 games over the next year because that seems like the only thing likely to happen for marks foolish enough to buy a new console this holiday season.

I'll stick with my PS4 - Sam Chandler, Cross-generational games are good

One of the big things Sony fans have been clamoring about are the games that you can only play on PlayStation 5. Cut to the showcase and it seems that a lot of the high-profile games will also be playable on the PS4. Wasn't this a bad thing when Xbox did it?

Until God of War comes out, and is only available on PS5, I'll just stick to playing Game Pass games on my PC, playing third-person games on Series X when I need to, and playing any cross-gen games that take my fancy on my PlayStation 4.

<p.And, as much as I'm thrilled by most of what I saw in the Demon's Souls gameplay trailer, I can't in good conscience spend $750 AUD to play a single game at launch - in fact, one of the only games at launch that looks appealing to me, on a platform where none of my friends play.

Not Bad - Bill Lavoy, Managing Editor

I didn't mind what I saw from Sony with the PS5 Showcase. I snagged a pre-order, but not because I was so blown away I had to have it now. I need one for work, and I would get one eventually due to killer exclusives, but nothing about the presentation made me crank my hype level up. If anything, I'm more caught up in the fact we're approaching a Q4 where we get a new Xbox, new PlayStation, the RTX 30XX series, and Cyberpunk 2077. It's a very cool time to be a gamer, so long as you have a few thousand bucks burning a hole in your pocket.

Who knew Cross-Gen would be so big? - Josh Hawkins, Guides Guy

I wasn't really expecting Sony to go about things the way that they did. Overall the presentation was nice, and the showcase did a lot to get us hyped up. Unfortunately, they also kind of shot themselves in the foot quite a bit, too.

By not revealing a whole lot of details about each game until after the presentation they forced users to go searching for that info, which probably led to some not even finding it until several hours later. They also didn't really drop any preorder info, instead leaving that to the social media team.

Overall the showcase was cool, but Sony could have done a lot better. Also, what the heck is up with all this cross-gen stuff? I wonder how that's going to affect games "pushing new boundaries" and all that next-gen marketing nonsense we keep hearing.

The right price, buried in a clown parade - TJ Denzer, News Editor

Boy howdy, was Wednesday a day. We got that showcase, I was happy to see Final Fantasy 16 and Deathloop (maybe my most anticipated game of 2021), and then, bahgawd, we got a price and launch date. Delicious!

Not so delicious? Being told pre-orders were going live on Thursday, November 17, only for them to open and sell out immediately after the show. I was streaming Indie-licious for Shacknews and had no idea until I stepped out of the ether. It was like the Community GIF in which Troy comes in with the pizzas to see everything is on fire and in chaos. Thank goodness I was one of the special few who signed up for Sony's dumb pre-order raffle so I could buy their poorly marketed box, because while the showcase was good, everything that has come after has been a circus.

Intrigued - David L. Craddock, long reads editor

DEMON'S SOULS DEMON'S SOULS DEMON'S SOULS DEMON'S SOULS DEMON'S SOULS DEMON'S SOULS DEMON'S SOULS DEMON'S SOULS DEMON'S SOULS DEMON'S SOULS DEMON'S SOULS DEMON'S SOULS DEMON'S SOULS DEMON'S SOULS DEMON'S SOULS DEMON'S SOULS DEMON'S SOULS DEMON'S SOULS DEMON'S SOULS DEMON'S SOULS DEMON'S SOULS.

Cheaper console will sell better - Greg Burke, Head of Video

As an avid Xbox console supporter there was only one way I saw Micosoft pulling out in front on the PS5, and that was with hardware price. In order to sell Xbox consoles, specify The Xbox Series X, they needed to come under what Sony was planning to charge. The fact that you can get a PS5 that supposedly does 4k at 60fps, for 100 less than the Xbox Series X is going to destroy the console in terms of sales. This is coming from a guy who doesn't really care about Demon Souls or other PS5 exclusives. True you have a Series S which falls under even cheaper than the PS5 digital version but people want the best hardware for the cheapest price, and no one is going to want a Series S since it comes with much less power, even if Microsoft thinks it's a great value. It doesn't matter. Xbox will sell one Series X for every four PS5's sold.

It was ok - Steve Tyminski, Contributing Editor

Sony finally revealed more details of the PlayStation 5 during the September reveal event. I would have to say the biggest take-away I had from it was the price of the system. That was something I wanted to know for quite some time and the world got the answer of $399 for the digital only and $499 for the disc drive version. Those prices aren't as bad as I thought they were going to be. That being said Demon's Souls is a game that I'm looking forward to as well as the new Spider-man, Final Fantasy and God of War. The PlayStation Plus collection is another good add on to the system in an era where everyone wants to be able to play their older games in one form or another.

Those are our thoughts? What are your thoughts on the September PlayStation 5 Showcase? What are your thoughts on the clown fiesta that ensued since? Join the conversation and let us know. And if you're not part of the Chatty community, hit the button at the top of the page and register your account today.

Shack Staff

Shack Staff stories are a collective effort with multiple staff members contributing. Many of our lists often involve entires from several editors, and our weekly Shack Chat is something we all contribute to as a group.