CLIFF NOTES because i'm tired of people posting aggressively toward me having not bothered to even read the post:
Sony's first party games almost always feature state-of-the-art technology powering them, but the gameplay seems to have a lower benchmark. Not to say that any of Sony's games are bad - far from it - however i feel the emphasis on making their games a showcase for the PS3's graphical capability is selling them short in terms of really innovative, outstanding gameplay and design. Instead, they release consistant and 'solid' games which garner good reviews and are generally enjoyed by those who play them, but which quickly die down in terms of general enthusiasm and interest in the game, much like a summer action-flick at the movies which, while fun to watch, leaves no lasting impression on the viewer.
ORIGINAL POST:
It seems to me that Sony's games just dont hold any interest in either System wars or the gaming community as a whole. If we take Killzone 2, easily the biggest blockbuster to hit the PS3 this year, and it's all but dead in just a couple of months. Halo 3 tops the Live charts week after week and is still discussed here pretty much daily, yet Killzone 2 appears to have had it's brief flash in the pan and then faded away in no time at all. I think this is because the game's graphics were its selling point. Once you'd seen it in action, admired the pretty effects and grown accustomed to them, there just isn't that much else to get you excited about the game.
Same with games like Ratchet and Clank and Uncharted. Decent enough gameplay, but real emphasis on the visuals. I think this approach adds up to generally dull games in the long-term. Take a movie like Wanted. Visually striking, and pretty fun while you're watching it, but once you're done it's completely forgettable. You dont want to go see it again. You dont want to go talk about it.
Take Little Big Planet - remember how that game was going to rule the world? What happened? It fizzled out in a matter of weeks.
I think Sony are trying to hard to convince gamers that their system is the 'premium' piece of tech by investing so much in graphics and effects, often at the behest of truly outstanding gameplay. So long as it looks fantastic, and plays competently enough, they seem happy to release the game, and people want something more than that.
EDIT:
I'm not saying Sony game suck by any means, nor is this a simple matter of total threads on system wars per day.
Ninja-Hippo
That's just the way entertainment works. You get a bunch of games that do things right, but only a few will be remembered as classics. Nintendo has Mario, Zelda, and Metroid, Microsoft Halo and Gears of War, Sony God of War and Gran Turismo.
By that same logic, most studios are guilty of not having enough substance. Look at the first Fable. It was good, but it fell short of the hype it generated. Zelda games have been repeating the same formula for YEARS. Same with Metroid. In fact, Metroid's pretty much Zelda, but in a different setting. You don't have good items in the beginning, you get them, they allow you to go to other places where you find more important items. What I'm getting at is that it doesn't apply to just Sony. If you run down the list of IP of Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo, you'll see a ton of games that are easily forgotten. Here's to name a few:
Microsoft: Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey
Sony: Killzone, Lair, Haze
Nintendo: Zelda (Ever since they've been compared to OoT. Which is to say... all of them after that), Mario Sunshine
They don't need to reinvent an entire genre. They just need to do things well. I mean, look at Halo. It's an FPS. You take guns and you shoot people. Bungie did things right with an interesting plot and new guns. They just made it so it work well on a console. I'm not downplaying Halo's merit, but that's just how I see it.
I'm slightly annoyed by your LBP argument though. To me, it's a case of having TOO much substance. So much that people don't really know what do with it. I mean, if you had the creativity and patience for the level creator, the possibilities are endless. People just don't want to spend the time or can't come with revolutionary new levels.
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