I think back to articles such as this one that came out before the PS5 released. We heard so much about the new SSD and the how it would revolutionise how we experience games. I remember thinking about the Unreal 5 tech demos too and imagining we'd get a new era of open world games.
But in 2026, I look back and realise many of my expectations weren't met. Sure, we can fast travel really quickly these days and some games boot up faster than the last generation. Visually the games are impressive with ray tracing and 4k resolutions.
But beyond that, I was expecting more. I thought we'd get more open world games with less pop-in and faster traversal. I thought we'd get more games with new destruction physics and impressive draw distances. I even thought we'd finally get a Superman game because the technology was finally ready for it!
There are a few games that excelled in some areas but ultimately fall short. Spiderman 2 had incredible traversal and fast loading but nothing else about it was new or different. Crimson Desert has incredible draw distances and a huge game world which can include dozens of on screen enemies, but it boots slowly, has terrible pop-in issues and the frame rate can drop considerably.
I think back to PS4 open worlds such as Batman Arkham Knight, The Witcher 4, and Red Dead Redemption 2. If these games were remastered in 4k with Ray tracing at 60fps today, they could stand shoulder to shoulder with the best PS5 open worlds.
Perhaps GTA 6 will change my opinion, and perhaps my expectations were too high but I can't help but feel disappointed right now. Does anyone think the same or am I being harsh?
p.s I tried posting this in the ps5 and playstation 5 groups but both got automatically deleted 😕