Sony broke news of a Classic console coming out just a couple of days ago.

I’m usually the first one to jump on things like this. When the NES Classic was announced, I was hyped. Unfortunately it was plagued by under production, and sold out quickly. I didn’t finally get my hands on one until they did a second production run and I had to pay scalper prices, but mission accomplished nonetheless. When the SNES Classic was released there must have been a bigger production run because I was able to get my hands on one for a smidge above MSRP. It was actually my girlfriend who got one for me, and later she also gifted me a Sega Genesis retro console that’s pretty awesome too. So clearly, I’ve been trying to recollect my lost childhood in recent years. You would think that I would be ready to swoop up the Playstation Classic as well given this history, but I’m less enthused. Let me tell you why.

Sure, I think its a great idea for those who never played games on this classic console, and I’m sure there will be some titles on it that I wouldn’t mind playing again. Unfortunately at this point the titles they have revealed don’t do much for me. For an MSRP of $99.99 (these things keep creeping up, don’t they?), it’s kind of expensive compared to the others, and it’s only going to be packed with 20 games. Here’s what they’ve revealed so far:

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved Final Fantasy VII, it was the first FF game I played all the way through, it was the first one in 3D, and it broke a lot of ground. It’s the reason I sold off my Sega Genesis to buy a Playstation. But I don’t think I could play it again. I tried about a decade ago and already it felt dated and difficult to play. I never played JumpingFlash! and don’t care, I didn’t care for the Ridge Racer series, I always preferred Gran Turismo. I detest Tekken and 3D fighters (except for Soul Calibur) and Wild Arms was a JRPG my friends were super into but I just didn’t get it. The problem I’m seeing here is that they are packaging the most desirable titles with some lackluster ones, and unfortunately the company has put out so many versions of some of these games you probably already own some of them. We haven’t seen the full list yet, but I already have FF7 and Final Fantasy Tactics playable on my PS3. They’ve put most of the FF titles on Steam, so I own FF9 over there. I bought the Resident Evil Anthology when #6 released, so I have copies of the PSOne versions already. All of the Grand Theft Autos have made appearances elsewhere. We just got a Crash Bandicoot remake for PS4. The Street Fighter 30th Anniversary compilation from earlier this year has all of the PSOne titles on it. I really don’t think they’re going to put something on here that I can’t already play somewhere else, so that tells me this product isn’t for me.

The thing with having owned every Playstation Console is that they have all had some sort of backwards compatibility. The PS2 could play PS1 discs. The PS3 brought us the Playstation Store and allowed for downloads of PSOne and PS2 classic titles. The PS4 has continued this tradition, though doesn’t seem to care to make downloadable PS3 games, but I have held onto my PS3 so that doesn’t matter. Basically, if you aren’t too young to remember the PSOne, you’re probably not going to need a Playstation Classic. That’s my two cents. How do you feel about it?