Sony, Please Let Us Keep the Anniversary Startups on PS5

Sony has done a great job of using its history as a source of nostalgia in recent years, and for their 30th anniversary they’ve given us retro PlayStation themes for our consoles. Hooray! But for a “limited time.” Boo!

30th Anniversary Startups Are Phenomenal

These topics have two main components. The first is a retro startup sequence that mimics the startup sequence of the PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3 or PlayStation 4 on your PlayStation 5 console.

As an original PlayStation guy, I feel a chill of nostalgia right in my bones when I hear the PS1 startup sound, and hearing it through a modern soundbar rather than through the mono speaker of my crummy old CRT TV is a real treat.

Whichever PlayStation is your favorite, there’s a startup here to please you, but beyond that the theme also brings changes to the PlayStation 5 system screens, with an image of the old console visible at the top edge of the screen. I think it’s all done tastefully and with great care.

There’s no reason to limit their time

So, if we can all agree that these nostalgia themes are pretty good, why, oh why, would Sony want to remove them? I don’t even know what that vague “limited time” means. Despite spending quite a bit of time googling, I couldn’t find an official end date from Sony, so for all we know it could be days, months or years.

I know I said there was no reason to limit these topics, but that’s not entirely true. technical There are reasons to limit the duration of access to these topics, but there are psychological marketing reasons that allow us to set vague and arbitrary deadlines. At least it encourages people to check out these threads if they, like me, haven’t turned on their PlayStation in a while.

By artificially making something scarce, you create a lot of excitement and interest. This is what you need for an event like your product’s 30th anniversary.

PlayStation has an amazing legacy

I still feel like the Sony PlayStation is new to gaming, but that’s only because I was there when the PS1 came out to throw off my interest in the SNES or Genesis. PlayStation has one of the best legacies in all of gaming right now. Equal to the likes of Atari, Sega and Nintendo. And, in my opinion, certainly far exceeds what the fading star of Xbox achieved.

Sony has done a “generally” great job of capitalizing on this legacy, but it’s far from perfect. The company deals with numerous dormant franchises and has many games stuck on older generation consoles that could use remasters. Support for older games through emulation is frankly weak. And it couldn’t match what Nintendo has to offer. Classics for NES and SNES consoles did it with the release of the ill-fated PS1 classic. However, with game titles like Astrobot and adding retro PlayStation games on PlayStation PlusSony is definitely on top of things here.

These anniversary themes are a big tick on the “good job” list, and I really hope the “time limited” part turns out to be untrue.

This is literally a free win for you, Sony

Nobody wants to see these retro themes go away. Sony has clearly already done all the work, so all they have to do to get a big PR win is, well, Nothing. I cynically suspect that the plan all along was to say that themes were disappearing and then roll out that solution thanks to “popular demand”, but if I’m wrong, why not listen to Sony’s reasoning? Everyone will love it if you don’t disable these threads, and by the time the next big date rolls around, we’ll be on PlayStation 6. So, do the right thing.