Three Things Needed from the PlayStation State of Play

There’s a PlayStation State of Play tomorrow, giving us a look at some of the games coming in the next year or so. Lucky for Sony, we’re all pretty easy to please.

There’s not much I want, especially not this side of Christmas. I don’t expect Shenmue III, The Last Guardian and a Final Fantasy VII remake all in one show. I just want it to be solid. Is that too much to ask?

It hasn’t always been obvious, for PlayStation or the other brands. And some of these short anti-conferences have been, well, bad. But they don’t need to be.

Here’s a few things I’d love to see tomorrow night.

PlayStation First Party News

Sony’s single player first party slate is basically empty. Death Stranding 2 is on the horizon, although the link to the PlayStation brand is thinner than ever. The first game came to PC, was on Game Pass and then was released on Xbox. It was made by a third party team, and Sony no longer owns the IP. It is, effectively, a timed exclusive waiting to happen.

Which is fine. The more people that can play the better. What’s really interesting to me is what’s next for Sony’s internal teams.

We know there’s been a lot of strife in 2024. Concord was released and died within a week, taking with it several other major GaaS projects too. Remasters have been filling in some content gaps. What comes next?

I don’t expect any major news here. In December we got a glimpse at Naughty Dog’s next game, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. And while it was a cutscene-led teaser more than anything, I suspect there’s little hope of any other major projects being unveiled this soon after. I’d love to be wrong.

But if there’s going to be one sticking point here, one problem that gets called out by fans, it’ll be “where are the first party games?”

Unless they utter the words Bloodborne. And people have been convincing themselves that it could happen. This time for real. Honestly.

Some Third Party Bangers

This one is almost guaranteed. We already know there’s likely to be a Metal Gear Solid 3 Delta trailer (it leaked on the PlayStation store last week). But there are franchises including Resident Evil, Kingdom Hearts and Persona that almost certainly have imminent announcements. Tomorrow night would be an awesome venue for these.

If you can’t do the first party stuff, the best way of getting people talking about your show is to have some incredible third party stuff. Sony have historically been pretty good at that. Will they deliver here? It might be wishful thinking, but I think they will. These games have to get announced somewhere right?

Resident Evil is the most likely. The ninth entry in the mainline series seems likely to be on shelves either this year or early next. It’s been a good while since 8, and a year since the 4 Remake. We know they’ve been cooking this one for a while, so expect to see it sometime soon.

Kingdom Hearts 4 is a mystery. It was announced and it hasn’t been mentioned since. This can be easily explained by marketing cycles for Final Fantasy XVI and VII Rebirth. Those are out now, and the next major game is likely to be 7-3. Kingdom Hearts – if it’s still alive – will probably fit in between now and then.

But it feels like more of a Summer Games Fest thing. Either way, I hope we’re not waiting too much longer for confirmation that it’s still on the cards.

Indiana Jones (And the PC Ports of Doom)

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was one of the best games of 2024. It’s coming to PlayStation. This is good news.

But as of now, there isn’t a solid release date. It would be awesome to see this game get to shine with even more players and, who knows, maybe the “I haven’t played it but” people will chill out for a little while after too.

We’re still very much in the experimental phase of Xbox games releasing in PlayStation. This is one of the last ones that won’t be day and date, I’m sure of it. But it’ll also be the biggest game to this point, and it’ll be interesting to see fresh data on how successful the changes are going to be.

Fanboys will tell you this is unlikely. I’m not sure. It’s a major game for the first part of the year, and one that has already reviewed well. It could definitely happen.

While we’re talking about once unlikely ports. I don’t expect anything about the next slate of Sony games on PC. PlayStation still seem to be pretending that it’s all about getting people into their ecosystem, although they’ve walked back the PSN requirements so they’ve learned something. If they do appear, or if PC ports are mentioned at all (again, Bloodborne), it’ll give us a look at things to come. Spider-Man 2 released with basically no publicity, and it was a buggy port to boot. What is going on?