5 years of PlayStation 5: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly

Rainer Etzweiler

19/11/2025

Translation: Elicia Payne

The PlayStation 5 sits between technical excellence and creative fatigue. To celebrate the console’s fifth birthday, I’ll examine it today – warts and all.

The number of grey hairs on my head and dead monstera plant in my living room make it unmistakeably clear: time is painfully unforgiving and it stops for nothing and no one. Not even for games consoles that have only just been released. At least that’s how it feels, but fact is, the PlayStation 5’s celebrating its fifth birthday today.

Sony’s decided to mark the anniversary by sharing impressive figures. To be precise, it’s sold over 84 million units and more than 100 billion hours have been played across a total of 7500 games (!).

Especially in comparison to its direct competitor, Microsoft’s Xbox series consoles, this is unquestionably a dominant victory. Few facts demonstrate this as clearly as the recent announcement of the Halo remake for the Sony console. Master Chief of all people, Microsoft’s most loyal hero, will soon be saluting PlayStation hardware.

Nintendo, on the other hand, continues to operate from its own parallel dimension, where gameplay triumphs over graphic splendour and an Italian plumber has more cultural relevance than all photorealistic protagonists put together. With that in mind, it’s quite difficult to directly compare the two. And even former PlayStation President Shuhei Yoshida once said that Sony doesn’t really consider Nintendo a competitor because the Mario group serves a different market.

Ultimately it’s not particularly important whether Yoshida’s right about this. Emotions aside, the PlayStation 5 has been hugely successful.

The pandemic console

The PlayStation 5 was released when the world stood still. In November 2020, the second Covid wave had just hit and governments collectively condemned us to house arrest. Baking bread and walks in the woods got boring pretty quickly, which is why Sony’s next-gen console became the holy grail of lockdown.

Gaming fans who weren’t currently addicted to Animal Crossing: New Horizons were all keen on the device. And while Tom Nook was talking us into debt, scalpers were playing with the price screws: PS5 consoles were changing hands for three to four times the retail price due to the short supply.

I was able to secure myself one the next winter at a retailer, but only because I promised him I’d buy an additional controller and three games.

It’d be a full two years before you could get the PS5 normally without having to pawn your first-born. Sony missed out on a lot of sales, but at the same time the scarcity made the PS5 the hottest gadget around – and that’s a marketing tool no amount of money can buy.

Was the hype back then justified? Here’s my attempt at a final verdict for its 5th birthday.

The Good, Part 1: games

I’ll start with the positive. The PS5 offers an almost ridiculously large selection of games. Thanks to backward compatibility, you get the complete PS4 library on top of the 7,500 releases mentioned above.

This includes AAA blockbusters, acclaimed indie hits, a whole lot of junk and everything in between. Meanwhile, the PS5 can also boast a solid selection of exclusive titles. Ghost of Yōtei, Astro Bot and Spider-Man 2 are among the best games of this generation and impressively demonstrate how much power there is in technology.

Then you have multi-platform giants like Baldur’s Gate 3, Alan Wake 2 or Tekken 8, which often perform better on the PS5, even though the Xbox Series X is actually the stronger system on paper. The difference in performance is even more obvious on the PS5 Pro. Thanks to a better GPU, the deluxe model’s currently the most powerful home console.

The Good, Part 2: hardware

When a graphically demanding game rotated on my PS4, it sometimes sounded like a helicopter was landing next to me. It was a pain, but at least I could play what other PS4 owners couldn’t because the Blue Light of Death bug had completely paralysed their console.

In contrast to its problem-prone predecessor, the PlayStation 5 is a model of reliability. It’s also ultra-quiet (unless you got the first generation with coil beeping, in which case you’re out of luck), and as stable as the Swiss banking system pre-2008. The times when you had to look after your console like it was a sick patient are obviously over. I hope so, anyway.

The Dualsense controller also deserves a mention. This configurable, haptic feedback experience is so intense, thanks to the adaptive triggers (you can feel when Aloy draws her bow) and precise vibrations, that you almost forget that most developers are carefully ignoring the features while playing. But when a game actually makes use of the possibilities (looking at you, Astro Bot), it’s pure magic. Otherwise it’s just an expensive controller with lights.

The Good, Part 3: peripherals

The seemingly handheld PlayStation Portal and PlayStation VR2 prove that Sony’s still trying to make innovative moves in the industry. While the former recently received a cloud gaming upgrade, official support for VR2 has largely gone quiet. The last VR game to be developed in-house, Horizon: Call of the Mountain, was released in 2023 to coincide with the launch of the headset.

By contrast, the progress made in terms of accessibility is positive. The extensive customisation options and Access Controller make gaming more accessible for people with disabilities and open up our favourite hobby to an even broader section of the population.

The Bad, Part 1: last gen compromises

To this day, many cross-platform titles continue to be released, which inevitably leads to compromises. Developers juggle between two generations, which often results in a poor common denominator instead of the greatest possible vision. God of War: Ragnarok is a charming game, but I can’t help but think that without the PS4 version holding it back, there would’ve been more to it.

This means only very few games feel like «real» next-gen experiences. Ironically, one of them is the launch title Demon’s Souls.

The Bad, Part 2: exclusive games missing

Some of the biggest PlayStation studios haven’t delivered anything new since the PS5 launch. Naughty Dog’s (Uncharted, Last of Us) new IP won’t be released until 2026 at the earliest, Media Molecule (Dreams, LittleBigPlanet) has been silent since 2023 and Sony Bend (Days Gone, Syphon Filter) has been condemned to work in the live service mines.

«PlayStation 5 has no games» was a poorly substantiated argument against the console at the beginning of this generation. That was a load of nonsense then and even more so now – but there’s no denying that the number of PS5 exclusives has fallen short of expectations.

The Bad, Part 3: hardly any variety

The creative homogeneity in Sony’s portfolio has become a running gag. Almost all in-house AAA releases are 3rd-person character action games with grim men (or women) doing grim things while looking grimly at the camera.

Where’s the experimental playfulness that we saw in Gravity Rush? The absurd originality in Tokyo Jungle? The poetic beauty of Shadow of the Colossus?

Of course, these aren’t blockbusters or award winners. But they’re games with a unique charm that often lingers longer in the memory than the interchangeable depressing slop.

The Ugly, Part 1: waiting times

Development cycles have now taken on dimensions reminiscent of medieval fresco projects. The Last of Us Part II took almost six years, God of War: Ragnarök only slightly less.

Of course, this isn’t a Sony-exclusive problem, but especially in combination with the previous criticism, a thought arises that the solution’s actually already right in front of Sony: why not simply bridge the wait for a new Horizon with a creative smaller game?

Nintendo’s a prime example of this: between big blockbusters like Zelda and Mario, there are smaller titles from other franchises that fill the gaps. But perhaps Sony’s lacking capable studios for this, which brings me to the next point.

The Ugly, Part 2: studio closures

Sony has closed or reorganised a total of eight studios in the last ten years. These include Sony London (EyeToy, SingStar), Evolution (MotorStorm, Driveclub) and Japan Studio (Dark Cloud, The Last Guardian). Diversity has visibly suffered, and the fact that the brand cares so little about its legacy is sad. Especially considering what Sony’s been focusing on recently: its, ugh, live-service games.

The Ugly, Part 3: online only

This focus on live service games is the gaming equivalent of «Let’s stay friends». Nobody wants to, but Sony’s trying anyway. The spectacular failure of Concord – 400 million dollars in development costs, two weeks online, fewer players than a local street football tournament – should actually be enough of a warning. But Sony’s not budging.

«Insanity is doing the exact same fucking thing over and over again and expecting shit to change» is the most famous quote from the Far Cry franchise. Maybe someone should tell Sony this.

Verdict: more courage needed

The PlayStation 5 has given me hours of great gaming, and I’m sure there’ll be many more to come. The hardware’s fantastic and the software library impressive, but innovation seems to have been lost somewhere between quarterly reports and shareholder meetings.

The PS5 isn’t a bad console – the opposite, in fact. But it could be so much more. Less remasters, more risk. Fewer service games, more single-player. Less looking back, more perspectives.

Measured in terms of the PS4’s life cycle, the PS5 has at least as many years ahead of it as behind it. Plenty of time to turn the tide.

Until then, I’ll be playing Tokyo Jungle again on my PS3.

Want more? In our Swiss German A Tech Affair podcast, we cover this topic in more detail.

Rainer Etzweiler

Freelance Editor

rainer@rockstar.ch

In the early 90s, my older brother gave me his NES with The Legend of Zelda on it. It was the start of an obsession that continues to this day.

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