PlayStation's summer of tumbleweeds
Plus Playdate, pride month, Switch 2 games and Perfect Dark.
Hello there! As if this week wasn’t exciting enough, with the arrival of an all-new Nintendo platform after eight wonderful years with the Switch, it’s also the week where we start to get tidbits about the big “summer” game announcement season. There are some indie and Unreal shows coming up imminently, the major Geoff-fest, Day of the Devs and others over the weekend, and Xbox on Monday morning. What about PlayStation? Well that’s one of the topics we’re discussing today. Where has John Sony been lately?
Elsewhere we’ve been sucked back into the kooky world of the Playdate, we’re dreaming about the big Switch 2 releases beyond the launch window, we’re checking in on which companies are quiet on Pride now that it’s not a slam dunk PR move, and we’re remembering a brilliant Nintendo 64 shooter.
Where is PlayStation in 2025?
By Tim
When was the last time Sony released a wholly new, exclusive game for PlayStation, made by one of its in-house studios? This kind of thing used to be the company’s bread and butter, but we certainly haven’t seen one this year. The last one was Astro Bot in September, and before that was Spider-Man 2 in 2023. Before that I believe it was God of War Ragnarok in 2022. So what’s happening here? What’s changed since the halcyon days of 2018 where we used to get five or six of these things a year?
Obviously, the cost of game development and the time it takes to make a AAA game have both increased. But then Sony has more than 20 studios in its stable, so one game per year doesn’t seem like an intentional goal.
We’ve also seen an increase in ports, multi-platform releases, smaller games and third party exclusives in recent years, and if we count those there have been PlayStation games this year; the PC port of Spider-man 2, the multi-platform MLB The Show 25, the remastered Days Gone.
But again, it’s hard to imagine this is the Sony machine working at full efficiency. The flow of new games in major PlayStation franchises has slowed to a trickle over the last few years. And the company has also been notably quiet, where it was once producing the loudest hype of the three major platforms. Its last two major hardware launches — PSVR 2 and PS5 Pro — have been incredible devices that the company doesn’t seem especially interested in promoting, or supporting with new games.
I love my PS5 and some of my favorite franchises come from PlayStation. Easily my best memories from years of attending E3 are the massive PlayStation showcases, which simply feel like an impossibility today. Is the company simply happy with the amount it’s selling and doesn’t see the need to add more product? Is it waiting for economic headwinds to die down so it doesn’t have to sell first-party games for $150?
Given a dearth of real information we’re forced to speculate, and my mind goes straight to the worst possible places; that aborted crypto PS Stars scheme, all of the cancelled games, ramping up of live service projects, and more cancellations. Concord. Bungie. Is it possible that, at some point in recent years, Sony put all of its eggs in precisely the wrong baskets? And now it all has is scramble?
We have Ghost of Yotei as our one big game this year, and there’s no doubt it will be good. But I really hope things ramp up again soon.
What to play
Anyone who owns Panic’s cheerful Playdate handheld system should consider paying the $60 for Season 2, which is available now and includes 12 games plus a surprise, rolling out over six weeks. I love waking up on a Thursday to find random new things to play on this silly device, and the first delivery so far has exceeded expectations. Fulcrum Defender is a brilliant roguelike shooter that makes heavy use of the crank, designed by one of the main developers behind Into the Breach. Then there’s Dig Dig Dino, a really cute and chill puzzle loop game from an indie supergroup. And the surprise is Blippo+, an absolutely unhinged FMV game where you flip through channels presented as live broadcasts. There’s really no “game” here, except that the presenters are all talking about some big extraterrestrial news that you can piece together if you pay attention. At first I thought aliens were coming to Earth, but it’s better than that! I can’t wait for the Blippo+ content to update this week and progress the story.
A new month means new PlayStation Plus games to download and keep (as long as you stay subbed). The new batch will be available on Friday and includes that recent Alone in the Dark remake, NBA 2K25 and stylish skater Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. Also available right now, members who own Destiny 2 can grab the Final Shape DLC for free.
New on Game Pass is wonderful RPG Metaphor ReFantazio, online shooter Tom Clancy’s The Division 2, Spray Paint Simulator, and day one release To a T, which is a funny adventure game from the creator of Katamari Damacy, featuring a main character stuck in a T-pose. Also keep an eye out for a pair of excellent indies joining the catalogue imminently; grave janitor metroidvania Crypt Custodian, and musical platformer Symphonia.
There are some genuinely great games available for free on the Epic Games Store this week: Limbo (a 2D sidescrolling puzzle platformer that is absolutely brilliant)and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands (a Borderlands spin off). One’s a classic, one’s pretty good, both are free!
All the games you can’t play this week. Well, some of them.
By Alice
I’m excited about the Switch 2 coming out later this week. You’re excited about the Switch 2 coming out later this week. Tim and I will have a lot to say about the Switch 2 next week after we’ve got our own. But, for now, let’s talk about all the games I’m looking forward to on the Switch 2 that aren’t coming out this month. The stuff we have to wait for.
Drag X Drive
I get that this isn’t going to be everyone’s first pick. That’s because most people are wrong most of the time, much like all made up statistics. Firstly, wheelchair basketball is an incredible sport and in many ways much cooler than leg basketball. Crashing into people is frowned upon in leg basketball, but just another part of the game of wheelchair basketball. Awesome.
Secondly, it was just a lot of fun and really used the mouse controls on the JoyCon in a way that I don’t think I would have really considered otherwise. Manipulating each JoyCon as if it were a wheel was such a smart way of demonstrating what the controllers can do.
Pokemon Legends: Z-A
This is a Pokemon game. Of course we all want the Pokemon game.
Project 007
I don’t know what this is going to be, and it has a hell of a lot to live up to given the way they’re trying to play with our GoldenEye nostalgia. But I’m interested to see what IO Interactive comes up with. I hope it doesn’t suck, but that could be fun too.
Hades II
Hades I was good, so this will probably also be good. Plus, as a Xena fan, I am legally obligated to be interested in anything regarding Greek mythology.
Bricks, Boards and Beginnings
by Alice
It’s US Pride Month, and this is usually the time when I complain about all things corporate pride being fake because these companies would abandon the community as soon as it got hard or stopped being as profitable. Well, things have gotten hard and I have been proven right in a surprising number of cases. Normally, I love being right. Now, though, it doesn’t feel so great.
Usually by now there would be a bunch of pronouncements on the big gaming companies’ social media pages saying how they’re supporting the “Pride community”, putting rainbows everywhere and doing a #LoveIsLove post. But, looking at PlayStation and Xbox in particular, the rainbow icons on socials seem to have been left behind this year. There aren’t any press releases marking pride month on their websites (but you can find the press releases from previous years).
PlayStation does still have a spotlight on the company’s comparatively impressive lineup of queer games (truly, no one provides for lesbian gamers like PlayStation) if you search for it in the store, and Xbox has made Tell Me Why (a game with a transgender protagonist) free for the month as well as featuring a bewildering rainbow Forza tshirt in the merch store. But for two companies that are usually so keen to be seen championing diversity in gaming, it is interesting to find the limits of that so quickly.
It’s reminding me of when Bethesda used to change to a rainbow icon only in the markets where it would be well received.
That’s not to say other companies aren’t still willing to fly the flag: Riot Games is making a donation to oSTEM and is highlighting queer content in Valiant and League of Legends, The Pokemon Company is still sponsoring Seattle Pride, and Halo Infinite has free cosmetics for Pride Month.
I’m hoping it’s just because these companies are a bit sluggish this year, rather than a shift in policy. Looking back through the years, the announcements do tend to go out around 31 May or 1 June, and the pride marches and festivals have already kicked off in many parts of the US.
If this is going the way it looks like we’re going, this is something we should all remember in a few years when rainbow capitalism season rolls back around. We will remember who stood by us even when it was difficult.
Retro Esoterica
by Tim
Perfect Dark is now 25 years old, and I’ve been replaying it to refresh my memory on what has made it one of the most enduring and influential console shooters. And I think it all starts with the things it brought over from GoldenEye.
One of the many revolutionary things about the 1997 James Bond game was how the difficulty setting affected your objectives. A level like Dam or the second Bunker is much easier when you basically just have to run to the end, but the higher difficulties add much more complex goals that require you to explore the whole level. And being loud or triggering alarms brings an unbeatable number of enemies, so you need to learn the layouts and patrol routes, taking out foes with stealth.
In Perfect Dark, this is all taken to the next level. The levels are bigger, the objectives more varied, and your tools for stealth extended through multi-function weapons and situational elements like disguises. Playing on the easier difficulties is a power fantasy, while on harder ones it’s a fuller, more nuanced spy thriller.
It’s not as impressive, 25 years later, to see a photo-faced security guard scream “you bitch!” as he dies slowly despite being shot multiple times in the face. But as a Nintendo 64 game the whole thing is still mind-blowing on a technical level. From the spoken dialogue and blood spatters to the sheer ingenuity of how the in-game tech works in the world (the Farsight gun that can see and shoot through walls is still an all-time classic), this is generation-defining stuff.
And then of course there’s the multiplayer. Plenty has been said about the deathmatch, but there’s a wild amount of content here besides. There are bots with variable behaviour that can be used in custom scenarios, or taken on (alone or with friends) in a series of escalating challenges. There’s full co-operative capability in the campaign which is wild given its scope. And then there’s the brilliant (and barely ever imitated) counter-operative mode, where one player does the campaign while the other spawns in as random enemies.
Of course all this does come with a significant downside; the game runs abysmally on 64, especially in later levels when there are typically heaps of enemies and plenty of smoke effects. Fortunately the Xbox remaster is very playable and a lot of fun. Here’s hoping for a Switch 2 port somehow.