Analyzing the PlayStation Showcase Issue: When Can We Expect Sony to Announce Key PS5 Games for 2025 and 2026? (2024)

• Post published:12/06/2024
• Post comments:44 Comments

[Music] all right everyone it is time we now have the state of play behind us and also summer game Fest wrapping up and it was really those two events that we needed to see before we can make some kind of conclusion as to what we can or cannot expect from Sony because those were really the only two things we were waiting on in the short term and now it’s a matter of talking about the slate and also maybe expectations going into 2025 and Beyond because uh it is something where going into this year you know there’s been as we’ve said on ltps like a lot of pent up demand from the PlayStation Community uh wondering what’s going on with PlayStation Studios where all these big game announcements and uh I think a lot of pressure has sort of mounted up even more after the very successful and really strong showing from Microsoft with the recent Xbox game showcase which was quite good it was extremely good to be honest uh the pacing was great just trailer trailer trailer new game announcement here’s a new look at this game here’s some gameplay here’s a release window um really strong show and so let’s kind of go over the entire release slate and um I guess go into more of a analysis about just the sort of minute ways that these companies tend to make these kind of announcements because it really is a fascinating thing right um especially with how Sony’s been doing it lately you know this is something where I feel like I’m beating a dead horse but um we’ve seen this for going on four years now with the PlayStation 5 cycle uh and this goes into the PS4 cycle really which is when Sony stopped going to events like E3 Paris Games Week TGs Gamescom these reliable places that they were going to show up every single time and we knew they were going to say something and now it’s a matter of oh you know they usually do a stay to play around this time sometimes they do September showcases oh wait now it’s a state of play in in June or the May area right and there’s a lot of announcements that are sometimes uh relegated to the Playstation blog they just kind of go about it in their own way nowadays it’s like predictable but also not predictable if that makes sense especially because a lot of these announcements sometimes show up at summer game Fest now um it’s it’s interesting because when you look at 2024 right this year you might almost think to yourself that there’s not a whole lot going on for PlayStation 5 although that’s clearly not true right there’s actually been a ton of game releases this year um you know we’ve already seen The Last of Us Part Two remastered Final Fantasy 7 rebirth uh hell div 2 shipped uh rise of the Ronin Stellar blade those are games that have already come out uh before we’re I mean we’re about halfway through the year and we still have as we just found out uh Concord coming out astrobot Lego Horizon Adventures Silent Hill 2 as a timed exclusive also until dawn um there’s no major 10 pole releases in there as we have also known for a while now from Sony’s language and their financial earnings that there’s no planned major sequels or temp pole release games that they expect to move 10 plus million units none of these games are what that’s you know none of those games fit into that criteria but that’s still a lot of software right I mean it’s one of those weird things where if you had all those announcements baked into a single PlayStation showcase one might actually argue that that’s a really strong showcase but the reality is all those games that we just listed off are scattered about right they show up in state of plays the blog summer game Fest PlayStation showcase um they really kind of run the gamut nowadays but if they were to sort of do this the way they used to I I think you could make a strong case that that would have been a very good PlayStation showcase um but obviously it’s just a lot different nowadays right so it’s more of a I guess perception thing now not to take away from like Microsoft’s recent showing of the Xbox game showcase I I thoroughly enjoyed that show especially since a lot of you know my take on these live streams is generally whether most people think they’re like trash or or amazing or just kind of okay like I like watching all of them because I just like watching video games um but obviously some are a lot stronger than the others and this was without a doubt in my opinion I think a lot of people are kind of feeling the same way it was one of their strongest shows in a long long time I mean this is something I brought up on the uh spawncast a few weeks ago when we were discussing some you know the recent rumors about project latitude internally at Microsoft how they’re planning on shipping games on Rival platforms that primarily being PlayStation 5 and you know I had brought up this point of like you know for Microsoft I may not agree with how they’ve gone about doing this in recent years which is acquiring third party Publishers regardless of that they have the teams now they have the studios they’re ready to acknowledge this problem this longstanding problem with Xbox which has been well also Studio management that’s been a core issue and it remains to be seen if they’ll be able to um maintain that long term but IP was also a problem as well but now they have a ton of Studios they have a release lineup That is eventually going to pay off despite 2020 to even 2022 which was really rough for Microsoft where they had practically nothing um you know it’s going to take a lot of dry years until you start bearing the fruit of all those Acquisitions even something going back to compulsion games in 2018 like eventually they’re going to ship a game right and now we’re seeing that with south of midnight eventually they’re going to have a very good showcase and that’s exactly what happened you know they showed off a new trailer for fable with some some gameplay south of midnight got gameplay um Perfect Dark from the initiative I mean I think had a very good proper reveal and showing um Indiana Jones got more gameplay AOW got more gameplay Gears of War eay that might not have had proper gameplay but that’s one of those things where it’s a very well-known established IP so you can kind of get away with only doing a title card maybe just a a barebones mission statement about what that game is as long as it’s out there right and people know what it is and it’s coming that alone is enough to really excite that kind of audience and that’s just really scratching the surface there were a lot of games in that showcase which really lined up well with their pacing also right um which included a lot of third party games which look that’s not really a problem all three major manufacturers are going to have third party games to Pat out you know what’s going to end up being an hour plus long sort of live stream they all do it that’s not really a problem obviously but it’s just holistically how they approached it it was quite good but I would make the argument right is that it took a long time for them to finally get there and you can’t necessarily expect that to happen again one could even make the case that well a lot of these games we did already know about but it’s just how they how they chose to go about doing it right A lot of these games you may have already known about but it’s more exciting to see uh actual gameplay of something a more formal reveal from the studio uh or a confirmed date for a particular game or knowing it’s launching in a game pass or a release window um you know these these things obviously are great no matter how you get them but uh that’s the thing with PlayStation right if it took that long for Microsoft to finally get there and having all those studios in house what I would actually sort of push back on here is when we go back to 2020 with the initial future of gaming uh live stream that Sony did for properly revealing PlayStation 5 right I feel like not many people are remembering this point in time where I think for many PlayStation fans some of the hardcore faithful they always sort of reflect fondly on E3 2015 or 2016 very strong shows by the way um but it’s it’s it’s one of those things where you know you can’t do that often I mean that was the problem with the later PS4 life cycle is that oh great they show off they showed off sushima again another death straning trailer more or Last of Us Part Two maybe it’s one of those things where people people complaining about that versus how it is nowadays they’re not the same I don’t want to obviously put words in people’s mouths but um you know it’s something where those were you know 2016 2015 those were really strong E3 uh presentations but it took another four or five years to get to 2020 which was in my opinion also a very strong show I mean you have to remember that 2020 live stream had destruction Allstars which at the time we did not know that game was going to be as bad as it was but you know it’s still a PS Studios game so we had but also Spider-Man Miles Morales Gran Turismo 7 Ratchet and Clank rft apart returnal Sack Boy big adventure Astros playroom Demon Souls Horizon forbidden West those were all in a single live stream that is absolutely nuts when you really look back on all those game announcements and really that was a a strong case for PlayStation 5 back in 2020 uh but you know hindsight’s everything right I I think some would obviously look back and go oh well some of those were cross gen or um some didn’t turn out all that well like d allar obviously um where ast’s playroom was a smaller game but either way it’s like in that moment that was a very strong showing it’s just a matter of you know it took four or something years for us to finally uh well really five six years to get to that point again for PlayStation’s in-house Studios and that’s why the company has been primarily leaning on a lot of exclusivity agreements or funding from outside Studios and things like that right that’s why PlayStation Studios is now this larger umbrella than what what worldwide Studios used to be that was strictly first party in-house teams now PS Studios is really a mix of first second party and also third party rise of the Ron and being our only like third party PS Studios game but you can see that that’s how they’re approaching it nowadays right um but that and also time exclusivity which the the company still does humor and I’d be curious to know if they’re still going to be as aggressive as they were considering their closest competitors now openly shipping games on their platform which is another point of contention for the Xbox game showcase is that you know some of those titles won also wonder will they eventually come over to PlayStation 5 that’s also entirely separate conversation it’s just uh one of those things that I I I really started to think about more which is you know it depends on I guess how the company always chooses to announce these things right now all these game announcements are spread out over so many things it almost feels like the company isn’t communicating when they they surely do just in a a different manner um when we look at PlayStation Studios right now uh there are a number of teams that we know can say something uh I would admit that with naughty dog and Santa Monica they’re probably late those are probably in my head late life cycle PS5 games I if anything they they’ve got to be like 2027 although I feel like these two Studios could easily get away with just putting a title card out there and that would excite people enough um despite them being very far away but they could in theory do that um some of the more short-term announcements that we could absolutely see though fire Sprites uh narrative horror game assuming that’s far along enough Sucker Punch Productions I think is very clearly in a place where whenever they’re ready to talk about the next uh ghost of sushima or ghost of whatever I mean that game is probably going to be 2026 in my opinion but you know you got to figure they’re ready to talk about that game I consider sushima closer than Naughty Dog by the way considering they did both ship games in late 2020 that being the PS4 cycle but Sucker Punch Productions is a very focused Studio they’re only doing tsushima whereas naughty dog is a much larger Studio spread across multiple game directors multiple projects we also know they canceled uh The Last of Us online so there’s a lot going on with naughty dog and those moving parts and they’re also doing a new IP which is uh that’s going to be a it’s going to take longer to establish versus a new or versus an existing property where you already have have a good foundation and a lot of assets as to what you’re going to be uh building and going forward so point being sushima is probably uh if I had to guess probably a 2026 game um Gorilla Games though what’s funny is that we got the Lego Horizon game but we still have more that we could see from them like this in-house Horizon multiplayer game which has been in the oven since 2018 assuming that game is on track uh or they’ve finally figured out a core gameplay loop I have no idea what the status is on this game but you got to figure it could be announced at any moment uh same for this Horizon remake that was certainly on the X Dev leak we know that game is coming um blueo games I think is getting close enough to where they’re like a big maybe uh to where they they could drop something Insomniac of course with Spider-Man 2 DLC and um a new Wolverine trailer considering that was announced really soon really early that and from the Insomniac breach we know they’ve got other titles in the pipeline so um they could be announcing another title very soon as well uh and then there’s Haven which Haven I would actually consider more of a maybe that’s only because I I’m not even sure if they’re really ready to show gameplay for fair games it’s it’s so weird how we got a dressed up cinematic very Ubisoft esque trailer which makes sense for that studio for fair games but then Concord got basically nothing and now that game shipping this year um but there’s that right then there’s xdev which we’ve we’ve still got that goopy Monster game we’ve got Sumo digitals uh project carbon which still is completely M uh Mia there’s secret teams Within PlayStation Studios that being uh PS Studios Visual Arts building a project that’s in collaboration with Naughty Dog uh we assume that’s probably a new Uncharted then there’s Jason blundell’s new team I mean there’s a lot of moving parts right now with siie what we can safely say is that Studios like hous Mark media molecule Bend are more than likely very far away from announcing something those are the kind of Studios where we’re going to start looking at uh you know what they’re up to once we get into like 20 26 27 you know um met molecu is probably even further away at this point but you know it’s a matter of really having a a four fiveyear turnover right we had it with PlayStation in 2020 I would have hoped 2023 would have been the year that we would have had all those big announcements from the the studios that we just listed off um but it does does seem very clear now that they’re simply trying to wait until they have a better release window that’s why I did that one conversation at the start of this year saying Sony has a 2024 games problem which was more discussing and looking at the release Slate from you know announcement to actual shipping of those games how long was that window is there some kind of pattern we can recognize and uh it seemed like it was about 2 years and PS5 was also the same thing about 2 years although those games actually shipped within 2 years with Co game delays baked in so that was uh actually quite impressive that tells me that maybe they do have this sort of general you know whether it’s coming from the top down or on a studio by Studio basis this motivation to not say anything until they feel a little bit closer uh to pinning down a release window and I would assume that’s maybe the case because now we’re in early uh not even early Midway through 2024 we still don’t know what these big Temple 2025 and six games are and we know they’re coming that’s the one other thing we can be absolutely certain of um because it’s it was in the financial report how many times the the company expects um some pretty big spikes in fiscal year 25 26 from uh from their own software so we know the games are coming it’s simply a matter of how they choose to talk about these things nowadays and so uh you know I’m not going to say for sure that means oh there’s going to be another showcase this year I’m not looking to pipe an audience up or be this sort of uh you know this let be a Sony defense conversation or anything I I think you all know I I’m not here to do that but uh it does say to me that they’re either planning on doing that or possibly we will just have to wait right up until like a literally a year from now but then you have a little bit more confidence knowing the next time they do talk about these these things they show us a proper gameplay reveal trailer and then boom guess what it’s coming out in 3 months or hey here’s Astro out of nowhere and that’s coming out in 3 months here’s this Lego Horizon game that you had no idea we were actually making and that’s also uh also shipping this year right having a smaller window from announcement to release um and it also really it greatly depends on where that’s going to fit in with uh the PlayStation 5 Pro reveal which is going to happen this year and if it’s anything like the PS4 Pro reveal that means it’ll be primarily about the hardware there it’ll be like hey here’s the the console here’s Mark cery uh giving the mission statement about what this thing does and why you should want it and here’s what pssr does and why it uh helps the console you know maintain a near 4K image quality and now these games can also use rate tracing effects and higher frame rates and so you’re probably going to get a lot of that with existing software as and hey here’s Spider-Man 2 or Ragnarok these familiar games and here’s how we’re improving them it won’t necessarily I would assume be new game announcements which would in a way maybe even take away from PS5 Pro in that moment um so it depends on how they want to do that or if they do a PS5 Pro sort of separate event then a showcase later down the road although I I think maybe a safer guess is we will have another state of play before the year closes out so it might just be something like that because we’ve seen state of plays run the gamut and actually have their own straight up PlayStation Studio announcements so it’s uh it’s it’s like we’ve got patterns but we don’t right for PlayStation nowadays uh and I I think it’s just interesting that when you look at the four fiveyear turnover it sometimes takes whether it’s Microsoft or Sony uh eventually you get those big major game announcements um I’m very happy that Microsoft got to finally have what what seemed like a a strong showing of software that is really exciting and encouraging for that platform but yeah I I just think we got to as it’s just like the patience thing that’s that’s all it is there’s there’s really no other way around it it’s uh unfortunate but uh we did get a lot of stuff announced recently and this year does have a lot of software coming out um just uh it seems like a lot of people don’t like that um but it could also just be not liking the games which is a fair complaint too I totally sympathize with people that maybe are not into the kind of software that um we get nowadays from from PlayStation but I still think there’s a lot of really good stuff to play uh across all Studios and all platforms so um with that in mind thank you so much for joining me in this conversation and I will see you all in my next video you take it easy [Music]