Remember when we all played Astro’s Playroom, which came pre-installed on every PlayStation 5, and enjoyed a collective nostalgia trip through Sony’s video game history, coupled with a great deal of hope for the future of our shiny new consoles? The platformer pays tribute to PlayStation’s past with cute little robot cameos representing nearly every video game hero from every era remotely associated with the brand. It was more or less a guided tour through the legacy of one of the big three, and after the PS4 solidified Sony as top dog in the console landscape, I was certainly in the mood to look back at how we got here when the PS5 launched in 2020. Now we have Astro Bot, the excellent follow-up that builds upon all the tight platforming, adorable robo aesthetics, and PlayStation nostalgia of that pack-in game. But it’s been four years since the PS5 launched with Astro’s Playroom installed and the new game also inadvertently spotlights the fact that, despite four trips around the sun, the system has remarkably little to show for it.
As of this writing, I’ve seen Astro Bot’s credits roll and collected 250 of its 300 hidden robots, which are tucked into every corner of its levels. Most of these are generic white and blue bots not meant to resemble any hero PlayStation fans have embodied or foe that they’ve faced. Some, however, are based on classic PlayStation characters, from OGs like Crash Bandicoot to more recent additions like Aloy from Horizon. There’s a pretty exciting range of characters to be found on Astro Bot’s adventures. I was grinning ear to ear when I found the Sly Cooper bot locked up in a cell for his kleptomaniac crimes. I was stoked to see some characters like Aigis and Joker from the Persona series after they’d been omitted from Astro’s Playroom. But after finding a couple hundred, I realized something was off. By my count, I’ve only encountered one that originates from a PlayStation 5 exclusive in those 250: Rivet from Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. But I look at a list of Sony’s output this generation, and ask myself what else would they pick from? What has Sony released for the PS5 that has had any cultural impact that stands alongside characters like Kratos or Nathan Drake? Is it really that surprising that Astro Bot has a dearth of works to draw from?
There may be more I have yet to uncover, but the fact that the PlayStation 5 has almost nothing to showcase in Astro Bot becomes more stark as the game goes on. Astro Bot has a series of levels in which its titular hero dons the garb and weapons of different characters from throughout PlayStation’s life. Each of these levels spotlights a character from a different console era (though the God of War one is a little iffy considering it spotlights the modern, Norse-inspired era that began on PS4 instead of the original Greece-based PS2 games), and there’s is no such level for a PS5 character. There are points when each console era and its respective heroes get their time in the spotlight with a dedicated sequence for each generation. The PS5 is conspicuously skipped over, however, as if there wasn’t enough material to merit it.
Throughout Astro Bot, you’re rescuing marooned PlayStation characters as you all attempt to repair your PS5-shaped ship that’s crash-landed on a remote planet. As I look back at Sony’s latest console generation, there’s something morbidly poetic about watching Astro Bot run around trying to repair and salvage a console that has taken a serious beating. It’s not a PlayStation-exclusive problem, as Microsoft is taking its own beatings across the aisle, but this console generation has been a black hole for PlayStation.
Four years in, the PlayStation 5 has been characterized by remasters and remakes banking on old ideas from better days, the upheaval of decades of legacy through studio shutdowns and job losses, the disappearance of beloved series that don’t fit a specific prestige framework Sony’s leaning into these days, and a live-service focus that has panned out exactly once. Just days before Astro Bot’s launch, Sony and Firewalk Studios announced plans to shut down Concord, one of the biggest pillars of Sony’s focus on forever games, two weeks after it came to stores. Astro Bot is a celebration, but what are we celebrating? Our collective endurance? The memory of a console family that was once characterized by a spirit of innovation which cannot be recaptured in this “number go up at all cost” climate?
In defense of PlayStation Studios, a lot of the defining works come in the second half of a console’s lifetime. The Last of Us wasn’t even in our field of view four years after the PS3 launched and it went on to become one of the most widely celebrated franchises in PlayStation’s arsenal. So there may certainly be the big, generation-defining games on the way. But Astro Bot reflects so poorly on everything Sony’s done since we last played as its robot hero. It is perhaps the most joyful thing to come out of Sony since the last Astro Bot, but so much of that joy comes from looking back rather than existing in the now because all we have now is a wasteland. I’m scared about what that says for the future.