{"id":605921,"date":"2026-02-21T13:49:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T13:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/605921\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T13:49:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T13:49:13","slug":"new-ps5-exclusive-game-from-sony-is-the-first-flop-of-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/605921\/","title":{"rendered":"New PS5 Exclusive Game From Sony Is the First Flop of 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

It has taken us two months, but we have the first flop of 2026, courtesy of the PS5<\/a> and Sony. In 2025, we had a very different story. 50% of the 2025\u2019s biggest flops were Xbox games<\/a>. Xbox\u2019s lineup for 2026 is looking much stronger, though, and this time it\u2019s Sony with a flop. The game in question was recently released and is currently sitting at a 66 on Metacritic. This isn\u2019t a good score by any standards, but it is particularly a bad score by the standards of Sony. In fact, this is the 4th lowest-rated video game release this year. Making it worse is the fact that it\u2019s tied to a big IP associated with massive, critical success. <\/p>\n

For those who have not connected the dots, the PS5 exclusive game in question is God of War: Sons of Sparta, a new, smaller spin-off in the GOW series. The fact that this is a spin-off and a smaller release obviously means the expectations are lessened, but anything PlayStation first-party and anything with the God of War name should be doing far better than a 66. Whether it will be a commercial flop remains to be seen, but it is certainly a critical flop. It is releasing during a fairly slow period, all things considered, so there\u2019s a good chance it will sell appreciably. To this end, it may be the first flop of 2026, but come the end of the year, there will almost certainly be more high-profile flops that eclipse it.<\/p>\n

A Different Kind of God of War Game<\/p>\n

For those unfamiliar with the game, it is nothing like the mainline games, but is rather a 2D metroidvania made by Mega Cat Studios and Santa Monica Studio. And in terms of lore, it\u2019s actually quite interesting because it explores Kratos\u2019 origin story as a young Spartan. That said, it\u2019s not a narrative-heavy game like its modern God of War counterparts. <\/p>\n

\t\t\tPlay video<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\"Play\"\/<\/p>\n

For what it is worth, consumer reception has been more positive than the game\u2019s critical reception, which does bode well for its commercial performance. That said, at 66, this is one of the lowest-scoring first-party PlayStation exclusive games of the PS4 and PS5 generation. Heck, it\u2019s only a couple of points better than the disastrous Concord<\/a>. <\/p>\n

All of that said, and as always, feel free to leave a comment or two letting us know what you think, or join the conversation over on the ComicBook Forum<\/a>. Are critics wrong about God of War Sons of Sparta?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It has taken us two months, but we have the first flop of 2026, courtesy of the PS5…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":605922,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[3767,18224,7795,158,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-605921","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-playstation","9":"tag-playstation-5","10":"tag-regular-news","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}