PS5's First Big Exclusive of 2023 Is a Flop

By Tyler Fischer

The first big PS5 exclusive of 2023 is out and it's looking increasingly like a rare flop for PlayStation. When you think of PlayStation and exclusive games, you think of high-quality games and series like Bloodborne, The Last of Us, God of War, Uncharted, Marvel's Spider-Man, and Death Stranding. Last generation, some of the best games were PlayStation exclusives. So far, it looks like this success will continue with the PS5 if the likes of God of War Ragnarok, Horizon Forbbiden West, Demon's Souls, and more are indicators. Yet, not every PlayStation exclusive can live up to this quality. And when the exclusive is made via a second-party or third-party developer, the consistency often suffers. One of the biggest recent flops, Babyon's Fall, came the way of a third-party deal PlayStation made with Square Enix. Fast-forward and Square Enix has delivered PlayStation another flop in the form of Forspoken.

While the flop levels of Forpsoken don't compare to the likes of Babylon's Fall, things sure could be going better for the game. Since its release this week, most chatter about the game on social media has been negative and having a laugh at the expense of the game's cringy writing and dialogue, made worse by the lackluster performance behind the game's protagonist.

Meanwhile, over on Metacritic, the game boasts a score of 66, which is mediocre by any standards, but very poor by the standards associated with major PlayStation exclusives. The user score is even worse. The PS5 version user score is a 3.6 while the PC version is a 1.8. Meanwhile, on Steam only 54 percent of players recommend the game.

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Speaking of Steam, its peak number of concurrent players is 9,824. This number isn't terrible, but it's far below what it needs to be when you consider the context and circumstances. 

It remains to be seen how well the game will sell, but right now it's not looking good for the PS5 console exclusive. There are many, many worse games out there, but when you consider the game's budget and marketing, the developer behind it, the expectations it generated, and the PlayStation exclusive seal on it, then you expect a lot more than what Forspoken has provided so far.

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