It ain’t a December without the Game Awards, Geoff Keighley’s annual trailer showcase and occasional awards ceremony celebrating the year’s biggest games.
And the winner turned out to be…Astro Bot, the PlayStation 5 exclusive platformer from Team Asobi.
The immediate next step is almost surely going to be a sequel of some kind; Team Asobi’s currently putting out free post-launch levels for Astro Bot, which has sold 1.5 million copies as of this past November.
No doubt Sony’s going to let Asobi cook, and whenever the next game’s revealed, I hope the Astro series takes its first step toward forging its own identity.
You have to imagine Sony’s looking at that alongside Astro Bot, too—a lot of PlayStation franchises get some love in that game, and fans have been hoping for years some of them get dusted off.
Without Geoff Keighley’s annual trailer showcase and sporadic awards ceremony honoring the year’s biggest games, December wouldn’t be the same. In contrast to previous years, this year’s nominees for the top Game of the Year award included a wide range of popular games, including Metaphor: ReFantazio and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, as well as unexpected favorites Balatro and Black Myth Wukong. And Astro Bot, the PlayStation 5-only platformer developed by Team Asobi, emerged victorious.
For the past ten years, the Game Awards have had a certain style when it comes to its GOTY selections. For example, Witcher 3, God of War’s 2018 reboot, and Baldur’s Gate 3 were all fantasy or mature games. Astro Bot, on the other hand, is a family-friendly game about a cute robot with a big head exploring worlds and befriending adorable Funko-sized PlayStation characters. Although the game is excellent, its victory was unexpected, particularly considering that Metaphor was also gaining popularity in its own right and Balatro had dominated the world for months. Now that everything has calmed down, people are wondering what it means for a platformer to take home a major prize in a major, widely recognized awards show for the medium.
A sequel of some sort will most likely be the next big thing. Team Asobi is now releasing Astro Bot’s free post-launch levels, which have sold 1.5 million copies as of this past November. I hope the Astro series takes the first step toward establishing its own identity when the next game is released, but I have no doubt that Sony will let Asobi cook. Both Bot and its predecessor, Astro’s Playroom, which was pre-installed on the original PS5s, have served as historical tours of PlayStation. Although it’s entertaining to see small, oversized mascots from childhood, the winking can get old quickly and emphasizes how the series only has its references and fantastic gameplay mechanics. An argument can be made that it doesn’t require any additional support, but other platformers have survived by having a distinctive personality. Nintendo is the only one of the big three publishers to truly understand that, which is why Mario and Luigi are able to maintain such a high level of consistency even when they play platformers and switch between a dozen other genres at any given time. Therefore, if Sony wants to create their own Mario, they will need to figure out who Astro is beyond a blank slate dressed in the skins of its previous series.
In relation to franchises, Capcom’s announcement that it was creating new games for the Okami and Onimusha franchises was one of the other major surprises at the Game Awards. The Resident Evil studio recently revealed that the two projects are a part of a larger effort to revitalize the series it previously shelved, and they have had a really successful run of releases lately. Since many PlayStation franchises receive some love in that game and fans have been hoping for years that some of them get dusted off, you can imagine Sony is also considering that alongside Astro Bot. Many have also hoped that the demise of Concord and the success of Astro have served as a wake-up call for Sony to concentrate on creating smaller, more varied games rather than risking their fortunes on the movie industry. It has been an issue in the industry for years, especially for PlayStation’s first-party teams. Because of its failure to identify the issue sooner, the company ended up firing over 1,000 developers this year and abandoning multiple projects.
Unfortunately, PlayStation’s focus on blockbusters has caused the double-A genre to decline, as many of their older franchises would probably do best in this genre today. Also see: Prince of Persia: Lost Crown, a decent game released earlier this year by Ubisoft. Since Sly 2: Band of Thieves was ported to the PS5, I’ve been playing it again and using cloud streaming to play Resistance 2 for the first time. Both seem perfectly suited to their respective eras, and it’s not difficult to see how their respective series might fit into the current PlayStation canon if they were given the freedom to exist without having high expectations placed on them. Last year, Sony attempted to prevent Microsoft from purchasing Activision Blizzard by claiming that Call of Duty was too valuable and that no other shooter could possibly compete with it. Sly could easily fill the void left by last year’s Hi-Fi Rush for stylish, personality-filled games, and Resistance or Killzone could be a good system-exclusive shooter. Although neither would need to strive for such high goals, it would be nice to have PlayStation’s response to Halo, which is also getting a second or third update. As it stands, Astro’s small, frail shoulders are now somewhat directly responsible for any hopes for mid-sized, non-Nintendo games with recognizable brands.
It’s not expected that Team Asobi will use Astro Bot to instantly fix all the problems with triple-A games; rather, it has the misfortune of coming at a time when the industry is coming to terms with years of calculated risks that haven’t paid off. Although creating a healthier industry will take time, its effects will eventually be felt, even if it’s only in an independent game that aims to capture some of its unrestrained, non-corporate spirit or in its own sequel.
If that isn’t possible, PlayStation should reduce the number of remasters and remakes and simply release more of its older first-party games on PC or PlayStation 5 natively.
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