If true, this will have gone from one of Sony's strongest years in terms of 1P to one of its weakest (2019 arguably being their weakest over the past decade, but I expect 2021 to be better off of Rift Apart alone).
All of the heavy-lifting will end up being done by timed 3P exclusives (Kena, Deathloop, maybe Sifu etc.), with the exception of Rachet & Clank: Rift Apart (Returnal I'm almost tempted to say is 1P but technically speaking Sony doesn't own Housemarque yet so I guess it should still be counted as an "extended-timed" 3P exclusive).
Combined with the Japan Studio news, doesn't necessarily feel all that great tbh.
I would argue having them release prematurely is better for the consumer. The sooner they release, the sooner early adopters start testing them, the sooner manufacturers start addressing and correcting faults in production lines, the sooner the consoles start aging and thus, decreasing in price. By the time PS5 has a worthy catalogue you will most likely be able to buy it at a lower price, and with the hardware also being far more reliable than it was in its initial launch stage.
No; Sony and Microsoft should be the ones testing these systems and addressing/correcting faults. Why are people paying full-price for systems Day 1 being asked to be QA beta testers? What world is this?
I wonder if that's the case. It could be that Sony is worried about releasing so many extremely expensive AAA games this year when chip shortages will severely limit the number of PS5s they can sell to consumers this year. Sony expected to sell 15 million PS5s in its first year, this forecast was changed to 11 million in September and it wouldn't surprise me if Sony is forced to lower the sales forecast again in the upcoming months.
It just doesn't make sense to release single player games that are expected to sell 10 million or more copies at a time when PS5 has such a small consumer base because of outside circumstances.
I'd understand this if it were, say, Rachet & Clank getting delayed, because AFAIK that is a PS5-only title. But that's not the situation here; Forbidden West was already confirmed for PS5 & PS4, so I don't see how chip shortages for PS5 affect a title that is cross-gen. At worst, they could just delay the PS5 version for a later date with maybe some more content and of course the better graphics/performance.
Just willing to accept that mo-cap work and further polishing might be taking them longer than anticipated for both versions of the game, hence it potentially getting delayed. Kind of disappointing tho because that's now three Sony 1P games that were initially promised for 2021 getting delayed to 2022 (GT7, Ragnarok, Forbidden West).
Resident Evil 8 will have 2021 GOTY award locked for sure
Most tracked and trending game in twitter/ social media thanks to lady dimitrescu
Nothing else ( comparably as big ) is coming this year
Not that RE8 is going to be bad (looks like it'll be excellent), but just goes to show how shallow criteria for GOTY (or really most of these award shows) tends to be since nowhere in your comment did the game's objective or relatively subjective quality once come up.
These awards are seemingly popularity contests and, probably similar to the Oscars, what companies can get the most "backstage" pull for their titles at the award proceedings through various incentives.