CEO of Team Asobi Has Revealed All It Took To Beat Jim Ryan’s Grand Plan Of Live-Service Dominance Was Treating Astro Bot Like A ‘Two-Course Meal’ For Players

In 2024, as the industry continues to suffer from the plague of vast but empty open-world games and overzealous live-service games, Astro Bot feels like a breath of fresh air, especially for PlayStation.

While PlayStation’s former CEO Jim Ryan pushed for live-service titles like Concord, it was Astro’s simple, finely crafted design that people truly wanted. This cements the fact that PlayStation can and will do just fine without chasing industry trends.

Astro Bot Is a Slap on Jim Ryan’s Plan to Push More Live Services Titles on Playstation

Critics have already hailed this game as this year’s best title and a perfect example of how a well-made single-player video game can provide immense and unadulterated joy.

However, the game’s instant success also brings Concord to mind for many, a live a live-service title that launched with the grandest aspirations but quickly floundered due to its tacked-on convoluted mechanics and just the attempt to compete in a genre that is long past its prime.

The untimely demise of Sony’s hero shooter is a direct result of Sony’s unnecessary push in a new direction under its former CEO. After all, what people want and have come to expect from its platform are single-player experiences that push the industry’s boundaries and almost always contend for multiple awards at the end of the year.

Sony spent millions on its live-service ventures, while Astro Bot, developed by a small team of 65 developers in just over three years, outperformed the venture’s first game in both critical reception and player engagement.

Sharing his thoughts on the industry, Nicolas Doucet once questioned if there was still room for something like the platformer his team was making, a game that feels like “a two-course meal” when others are offering complete buffets in the form of video games.

Well, we hope his questions have now received a concrete answer, as it is the game that people never knew they needed but craved for precisely what it offers for so long—an absolutely delicious video game served with a sprinkle of nostalgia and what this industry was once all about.

If You’ve Got a PlayStation 5, Then Astro Bot Deserves Your Complete and Undivided Attention

Featuring some of the tightest controls a platformer can have, amazing visuals, innovative platforming, excellent boss designs, and a high level of respect and appreciation for all of Sony’s IPs, it’s a title with just about everything one would want from a video game, all tied into a minimally-sized bundle of pure joy.

Not only that, but it’s also a true showcase of the PS5’s capabilities. You see, most other games are still floundering to simulate the experience of opening a door or a gun’s recoil using the DualSense Controller.

At the same time, Team Asobi is out here using said controller to its fullest potential, from simulating the feeling of skating on ice with its low rumble and sounds to emulating what standing in the rain would really feel like for our hero. It’s a kinesthetic masterpiece that feels completely in synchronicity with all its other elements.

With all this technical brilliance and nostalgic charm, it’s no surprise that the game is now being considered the front-runner for the Game of the Year 2024 award. For what Team Asobi has accomplished with it, though, they truly do deserve everything good coming their way.

With all that said, what are your thoughts on Astro Bot? Do you feel, in hindsight, that Sony’s live-service push is a misguided failure? Let us know in the comments below.