Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden is a big believer that "single player, narrative-driven gaming is here to stay," saying it's "what sustains" the business.

When you think of PlayStation's greatest hits, chances are, you're going to think of a whole bunch of single-player games. Whether it's The Last of Us, God of War, Uncharted, or Ghost of Tsushima, there's no doubt that games like this have been huge drivers of PlayStation's success, and although Sony has delved more into the world of live-service in recent years (to mixed success), Layden – former president of Sony Interactive Entertainment America – says it's with single-player games the games business was built, and what'll continue to keep it going.

"I firmly believe that single player, narrative-driven gaming is here to stay," he tells PSI in an interview on YouTube (below). "It's how we built this business. That's what sustains it. It's a type of game where you can enjoy it by yourself and talk to friends about it. Maybe there's multiplayer, maybe there isn't.

"But I think essentially most of our great gaming experiences are when we allow ourselves to be immersed in that world with that character, to learn that story, more so than 'I got online with a bunch of friends and we played team deathmatch.'"

That's not to say that live-service games don't have their place, of course. Helldivers 2, published by Sony Interactive Entertainment, has been hugely successful since its launch two years ago. However, we've obviously also seen a lot of live-service horror stories – Concord didn't even last two weeks before it was shut down for good, and while it still has plenty of fans, Destiny 2 has been in decline for a long time at this point, so much so that it's now received its final update.

It's worth noting that Layden's comments were made before Sony's announcement that it's killing physical discs for new PlayStation games in 2028, so he's not responding to that backlash here. In a separate interview about that decision, Layden called the move "dramatic," and suggested it could "heavily influence" Xbox and Nintendo's approach to physical games going forward.

Sony killing physical PlayStation games has folks so angry that its announcement has even more views than Rockstar's GTA 6 trailer posts on Twitter.

God of War Laufey will be available on a physical disc, developer Sony Santa Monica has confirmed. This strongly suggests the game will launch before the PS6, which is strongly expected to be a digital only console.

In the before times, this wouldn't be much of a story, but in a world where the biggest game to release this century, GTA 6, seemingly has no plans for a traditional physical launch, and more pertinent to this story, where PlayStation is ending production of physical discs, it's pretty big news. For physical game collectors, it's one of the biggest upcoming PS5 games on the horizon and one more they'll be able to save a space for on their shelves, like the good old days.

Responding to questions on Twitter, the official Sony Santa Monica account confirms: "We can confirm God of War Laufey will be available on disc."

God of War Laufey is the next mainline game in Sony Santa Monica's God of War series and the third game in the Norse saga. Instead of being a direct sequel to 2022's God of War Ragnarok, Laufey's story picks up directly following the scene depicting Faye's funeral from 2018 God of War, serving as a sort of connective link between God of War and God of War Ragnarok. And as you might expect from the title, longtime series protagonist Kratos isn't the lead protagonist here. Instead, players take control of the much more agile, but equally powerful, Laufey, Kratos's second wife and the mother of Atreus.

There's no release date for God of War Laufey yet, but again, if it's getting a disc, it's likely to launch as a PS5 game instead of a PS6 exclusive. Analysts think the PS6 could launch around 2028.

God of War Laufey proves women are still gaining ground in gaming, and I'm thrilled Kratos is sitting this one out

David Hayter, the striking voice behind the Metal Gear series' various Snake roles, isn't a fan of Sony's decision to end physical disc production for new games on PlayStation consoles in 2028 – and he's certainly not afraid to show it.

The end of physical media as we know it is dominating online discussions following Sony's announcement, which cited how "general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs" – a statement that plenty of folks definitely cannot get behind.

One of them is none other than David Hayter, the iconic voice actor known for his work on Metal Gear Solid games as Solid Snake, Old Snake, Naked Snake… you name it.

In a new online post, Hayter makes this as clear as he possibly can, sharing a picture of all his consoles and games (physical, of course, mind you). Between the Xbox and PlayStation 5 – and various controllers – I see a plethora of gems, including everything from GTA 5 to Red Dead Redemption 2.

As for his caption? "No disc, no buy." And, yes, he tags the official PlayStation account on Twitter, too, so as to catch Sony's attention.

Unsurprisingly, fans are largely in agreement with the actor, who admits in the comments that "this is a fraction of my game collection" as well. Not to mention, "I also have 2500+ DVDs." Physical media, you say? Hayter's no hater in that department.

He's not alone, either, as big developers in the industry themselves have spoken out against the move toward digital-only. Take former Blizzard boss Mike Ybarra, for example.

He says "we can't live in a world of fear if our games will work in the future or not," and game preservation experts share in that sentiment, explaining how this will all lead to more piracy.

Just yesterday, CEO of Lords of the Fallen 2 publisher CI Games, Marek Tyminski, also stated that Sony's choice to axe discs and the fact that GTA 6 is going disc-free itself "feels unfair to studios still backing physical" – so, yeah.

There's no telling what the future will bring for physical media enthusiasts, but I'm choosing to remain hopeful that game discs won't do a DVD on us and all but disappear. Something tells me Hayter is, too.

Here's why we think PlayStation killing discs is bad for everyone, whether you care about physical games or not.

On July 1, Sony announced the impending end of both physical PlayStation games and, in a demonstration of just one risk of a digital-only future, the shutdown of the PS3 and PS Vita storefronts. In its first social media post since this one-two bombshell, PlayStation discusses its fight stick controller.

The 10,000 Twitter replies this post has received in 30 minutes are not about the fight stick controller.

Increasingly, it appears that, just as PlayStation was previously bullied out of closing the PS3 and PS Vita stores in 2021, Sony has underestimated the scope and intensity of backlash resulting from its decision to end support for physical games.

Sony's July 1 announcement post has, according to Twitter view and comment metrics, outperformed both of the GTA 6 trailers shared by Rockstar Games. Rare close-ups of the most-anticipated game in history sparked less discussion than the death of discs on one of gaming's main platforms. I'm not sure this storm can be waited out, folks.

The responses to PlayStation's fight stick post are exactly what you'd expect: a litany of demands for discs interspersed with bizarre memes, riffs on PlayStation taglines ("Play has limits" and "Greed has no limits" and so on), and the general sharpening of pitchforks. My favorite reply is probably the shot of noted anti-corpo hero Cloud (of Final Fantasy 7) sizing up Sony headquarters. The award for best quote tweet goes to Scott Wozniak.

Sony higher-ups undoubtedly anticipated some measure of blowback to this new strategy, and for all we know this response is well within internal expectations and unlikely to rattle, let alone dissuade, leadership as the company's stock actually climbs after the news. Yet it's hard to remember a larger, louder, unified response in this space, and if I trust gamers with anything, it's spite.

We've heard many sensible arguments for the continued support of physical games. Consumer choice, game discovery, knock-on effects from collapsing game stores, hobbyist culture, repeat sales, price protection, new-gamer onboarding, game preservation – the list goes on.

Additionally, as gaming struggles to replace aging players and consoles tread water in a dire hardware market, many have called PlayStation short-sighted for inventing a new way to push even more people toward PC – as physical copies were a rare advantage consoles had over PC gaming – all just to make a little more money off game sales. Gaming is actively facing existential challenges that stretch far beyond the short term, and, historically, pissing everybody off hasn't worked out in any publisher's favor.

Instead of putting its games on PC, Sony apparently wants to escape the reputation that "PlayStation equals the living room" by selling monitors and speakers.

The industry is reeling at the moment from Sony's announcement that it'll be ending new physical discs for PlayStation consoles in 2028. Though the pivot appears quite sudden, barring more extraneous market factors, a new report suggests it's been coming for some time, and the main factory involved is already changing direction.

This comes from ORF Salzburg, an Austrian outlet who spoke to the head of Sony's flagship disc-producing plant in Thalgau about the shifting tide in business. Apparently, some 600,000 discs come out of the facility every single day, 50% of which are for PlayStation devices.

It was once part of a small phalanx of factories, with two based in the United States, but one of those was shuttered in 2011 and the other pivoted toward the auto industry. As of 2022, it's been all based in Thalgau, according to Dietmar Tanzer, the president of Sony DADC, and as translated by The Verge, it's since been treated as the centre of Sony's disced operations.

But since from 2028 onwards, those 300,000 pieces of circular plastic won't be going to PlayStation-related systems, the focus will apparently be on making microlenses, a practice that began coming in toward the end of 2024, The Verge notes. These are made using transparent discs, and per the report, Sony's recently allocated €30 million into the technology for manufacturing them, and there's potential to move into auto-motion too. It's claimed that employees are planned to be retrained extensively in the future, with plans to begin mass production of microlenses potentially as soon as next year.

Alas, the choice to discontinue physical games on PlayStation consoles wasn't made in a hurry, and it appears Sony's not about to give up on a start-of-the-art factory like in Thalgau. I'm relieved to see it doesn't appear jobs are being lost on this front, anyway, which was among my fears when hearing about the shift away from allowing us to buy discs in boxes.

This is a small upside thus far, and the industry's been collectively voicing their concerns and disappointments. The future of game preservation and consumer rights in the medium is in danger of regressing further. At least we'll have good microlenses.

Former PlayStation boss warns Sony won't be able to replicate a key factor to the PS2's success "in the current generation" due to hardware costs.

Sony is ending physical disc production for new PlayStation games in 2028, and the widely controversial decision could affect how Xbox and Nintendo approach physical media, according to the company's ex-boss.

Earlier this week, PlayStation made everyone and their unborn children mad by announcing that it plans to discontinue physical production of new games releasing on PS4, PS5, and inevitable PS6 consoles from January 2026. "Following this date, new games will be available on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only," the company explained.

Former PlayStation Worldwide Studios head, Shawn Layden, who led the company across its PS4 golden years, recently chimed in on the "dramatic decision" in an interview with Eurogamer.

Speaking on how PlayStation's disc-less future could impact the other two console makers, Layden essentially says it's not good news: "Certainly this is an industry where if one company, particularly the leader of the industry, makes a decision of this magnitude, that's going to heavily influence what the other ones do."

The Nintendo Switch 2 is a fairly new console that supports physical cartridges, despite a few less-than-ideal Game-Key Card releases. The likelihood of the Big N completely ditching physical games any time soon is pretty low, then.

Meanwhile, Xbox has pretty openly discussed its next-gen plans for Project Helix, a console that can also apparently play your PC games. What shape that takes isn't totally clear, but there haven't been any promises of a built-in disc drive at the time of writing.

Ending support for physical releases isn't a new point of debate for the company, Layden says, since was apparently asked about it "every year for the last 20 years." But he was always hesitant to pull the trigger until he was "comfortable enough to believe that worldwide, broadband throughout is good enough to support that download experience, good enough to reach the majority of customers," he tells Eurogamer. While he was in charge, that reality obviously never came to pass, though he acknowledges that he no longer works for PlayStation and, thus, no longer knows what their internal data says about the matter.

Regardless, Sony's decision has been hugely unpopular. Developers and publishers across the industry spoke out against PlayStation's all-digital future, citing concerns around game preservation and consumer rights.

Despite huge declines over the last two decades, one analyst recently revealed that spending on physical games in the US actually increased over the last 12-month period. Around $1.6 billion was spent on physical video games in the US alone – certainly nothing to scoff at, and the small increase in business indicates that it's not a market that's ready to die by itself.

Game preservation expert says stop killing games if you don't want piracy, because companies like PlayStation and Rockstar "refuse to offer a meaningful alternative"

Between the controversy that Rockstar Games has sparked with its upcoming GTA 6 release (one that sees digital download codes in "physical" copies rather than discs) and Sony ending physical disc production for new PlayStation games in 2028, it's been one heck of a week.

It's not looking good for collectors or general fans of physical media, that's for certain. On the one hand, we've got developers like Rockstar moving away from discs. On the other, there are even bigger companies like Sony announcing that it'll cut the production of new game discs for its consoles altogether in just a couple of years. Then, there's Nintendo with its introduction of game-key cards on the Switch 2 – so, yeah.

This, coupled with all of the Stop Killing Games chatter surrounding the end of live-service titles, has made for much discussion regarding consumer rights – so much so, in fact, that preservation experts like Video Game History Foundation director Frank Cifaldi have chimed in on the matter.

Most recently, he has responded to a person on social media asserting that "piracy is the only extant form of media preservation that exists in games right now."

Cifaldi doesn't exactly disagree there, writing, "As the director of a historical video game preservation institution, and someone who has dedicated his entire adult life to this cause, this is accurate. We have attempted to work with the industry's trade organization to find a legal path forward, but they refuse to offer a meaningful alternative."

As the director of a historical video game preservation institution, and someone who has dedicated his entire adult life to this cause, this is accurate. We have attempted to work with the industry's trade organization to find a legal path forward, but they refuse to offer a meaningful alternative.

— @frankcifaldi.bsky.social (@frankcifaldi.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-07-02T15:26:34.299Z

That certainly makes sense – heck, new games like GTA 6 are only the tip of the iceberg of the problem at hand.

This also lines up with what Cifaldi said yesterday, as Sony announced its plan for physical discs on PlayStation consoles – that downloading GTA 6 with the "hope it'll run in 50 years is not a preservation solution."

He dubbed the entire situation "unfortunate news for those who still prefer buying games on physical media," which, you know, isn't exactly a minor portion of video game consumers. There are quite a few collectors out there, too.

Here's hoping the industry itself takes note of people's reactions – although I doubt it'll be enough to convince companies like Sony to back down on their decision to step away from physical media. Times are changing, after all… I suppose.

Nintendo probably won't ditch physical games just because PlayStation is, analyst predicts: "Nintendo is going to be Nintendo, for better and/or worse."

Recent comments from Sony executives affirm PlayStation is eagerly exploring applications of AI, including the use of "synthetic assets" in game development.

A translated Q&A from the company's recent games and network services meeting includes joint remarks from Sony president and CEO Hideaki Nishino, studio business CEO Hermen Hulst, and senior vice president of finance and corporate development Lynn Azar.

In the meeting's opening presentation, Nishino says, "We also see AI as an important foundational technology supporting our strategy. AI is already helping us across various fields by improving development efficiency, enhancing the player experience, improving content discovery, and enabling creators to build richer content."

Nishino adds that, "With our global player base, deep library of IP, and integrated ecosystem, AI is an exciting long-term opportunity for us."

Nishino notably doesn't specify generative AI, which many game developers have pushed back on, but Sony does discuss how AI may be used in game development. Some of its messaging echoes previous chatter of expediting or removing tedium from game production, but it also looks at more operational applications across the business.

One questioner asks, "As new content emerges in the age of AI, how do you plan to differentiate your platform?"

Sony's joint response is wide-reaching. "With the introduction of AI, we are now able to analyze data at scale much more quickly, and we are seeing strong progress in advancing data utilization," it begins. For example, given the "enormous" volume of PlayStation Store transactions and the risk of "very significant" financial impact from fraud, Sony says "AI engines are being used to assess transaction reliability with a high degree of sophistication, contributing to the prevention of fraud."

Quick to stress that "as a creative entertainment company, we prioritize our creators," Sony says AI can enhance that creative work by "by removing repetitive tasks and enabling faster iteration and higher-quality outputs."

This includes the use of "synthetic assets, including synthetic voices, as early placeholders." Indeed, artificial voices have been used as placeholders in some games for quite some time, and the likes of Arc Raiders even shipped with many artificial voices. Today, the risks of AI-generated placeholder assets, especially art, slipping into the final version of a game and causing a stink among players have increased.

Former Dragon Age narrative lead David Gaider discussed this exact risk in scathing comments on generative AI. "All you'd need is one lazy developer or one temp asset that's been forgotten or was placed by someone who's since left the team and you'd have an issue on your hands," Gaider says.

Sony says these synthetic assets are "less about cost efficiency and more about improving quality and development speed, which we see as highly valuable." Of course, since game development costs are largely a function of labor over time, saving time via AI is unavoidably tied to cost efficiency.

Sony also squarely focuses on how games may benefit from AI. "For many years, AI has been deeply embedded in our development processes, and we are increasingly seeing its impact on more immersive in-game experiences, where characters and worlds are enhanced by AI capabilities," the company explains. It's unclear how far back Sony is looking, or how much of this sentiment stems from the fact that AI – as a broader technology and a means of, say, directing NPCs – was woven into games long before the term AI gained new meaning in the ChatGPT decade.

This rhetoric seems to veer closer to that of Ubisoft, which has made much of player-facing gen AI, including visions for more dynamic and responsive companions and other non-player characters. We've also seen some developers question the feasibility and fun of this application of gen AI, with concerns percolating that this approach will just result in poorly defined writing that tries to do everything.

"At the same time, we are experimenting at a more fundamental level with smaller, AI-first initiatives, while remaining realistic about near-term efficiency gains," Sony concludes, seemingly blunting the sensationalism seen in some circles of AI discussion. "These efforts position us to stay at the forefront as AI continues to evolve, both in development processes and in shaping future player experiences."

Instead of putting its games on PC, Sony apparently wants to escape the reputation that "PlayStation equals the living room" by selling monitors and speakers.

As Bethesda Game Studios plans for the Switch 2 release of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered, it reassures fans that the RPG remake will indeed be "available on a physical game card" – an assertion that catches the eye, to say the least.

In case you're out of the loop, fans of physical media have had a heck of a week. Yesterday, Sony announced that it's ending physical disc production for new games on PlayStation consoles in 2028, stating "general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs" – and, boy, did that cause a stir.

Unsurprisingly, folks aren't thrilled… and it's not too difficult to see why. The move away from discs and cartridges has been a hot topic. Bethesda, however, isn't dipping out of producing physical copies of its games just yet – and it's reassuring players that Oblivion Remastered on Switch 2 is no exception in that regard.

A new post from the company (which, mind you, went live mere hours after Sony announced its plan to axe physical disc production for PlayStation) reads that "The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered Deluxe Edition is available on a physical game card."

You know, "for those seeking to add to their collection!" The attached video shows the cartridge itself being waved around front and center, just to get the message across. That's totally just a conveniently timed coincidence and most definitely not a jab at Sony… right? Well, it's not like Bethesda names any names here or anything – but it does appear the community finds the timing amusing.

"This after Sony announces that they'll end disc production in 2028," as one fan's reply puts it. Another jests, "Alright, Bethesda. You got my attention!"

Honestly, I'm glad – joke or not – that Bethesda is still letting fans choose between going digital or physical. It's not as though Sony is the only big name to make moves away from the latter, anyway, with Nintendo having sparked similar controversy with its introduction of game-key cards on the Switch 2 last year.

That wasn't a complete wipe of physical copies for Nintendo's console, however, but it shows that times are certainly changing.

As someone who enjoys collecting games myself, I do hope more companies follow suit here and let consumers choose whether or not they want digital or physical releases. Choice is the key here, I'd say – and stripping that away is the core of the contention.

"Pretend we kept patching Oblivion. What would we have done if we kept supporting it?" – Todd Howard explains the "thought exercise" Bethesda went through for its remaster.

A former Microsoft gaming executive and Blizzard Entertainment's ex-president, Mike Ybarra, has reacted to the news of PlayStation's all-digital, disc-less future with some notes for console makers.

Sony Interactive Entertainment yesterday announced that physical production for new PlayStation games will end in January, 2028, effectively meaning games released after that point will no longer be printed on discs for the PS5, PS5 Pro, and inevitable PS6. A huge blow to game preservation and consumer rights, to say the least.

Former industry leader Mike Ybarra reckons platform holders have a lot of work to do before they're ready to ditch physical games and force gamers into an entirely digital future, based on a lengthy post to social media. "Sad to see this happening across the entire gaming industry. I guess it was going to happen at some point, but I didn't think it would be this soon," he tweets.

Top of the list? "You need to establish a digital promise for consumers. We can't live in a world of fear if our games will work in the future or not. You owe everyone a clear vision for our 'digital locker' that gives us confidence our games are actually our games. You don't get to just turn the games off (I get [multiplayer] games are different from [single-player] games, etc.)."

Reactions to PlayStation's decision have been heated, which might be putting it lightly, and a big worry is that games can simply be scrubbed offline or revoked for people who have spent real, hard-earned cash on them. Digital consumer rights in most countries haven't totally caught up yet, so nothing's legally stopping Xbox or PlayStation from going down this route.

"You need to innovate game sharing," Ybarra continues. "Lending my game to my friend should be as easy as handing him/her a disc. It's possible to do, I've lived it and looked into it before. As players, we should be able to share our games. You can have restrictions on it but fundamentally this should 'just work' 75%+ of the time. A 'friends and family' of 3, 6, 9, or whatever number is a solution others have in place. Mirror it and make it industry standard."

The former Blizzard boss then pitches a pretty radical idea that would let people "have an open marketplace" on consoles to resell their digital games to other players "for store credit or cash" – with the platform holders taking a cut of that money. "Game developers will not like this," Ybarra acknowledges, "but being consumer friendly has to go both ways here. A used game marketplace is a must have in my view."

He then asks console makers to make digital libraries more public, like achievements are, and to communicate what this all-digital future looks like more clearly. "All of this is possible. Make your platform the best place to play."

Downloading GTA 6 with the "hope it'll run in 50 years is not a preservation solution," Video Game History Foundation says as PlayStation kills discs.

This morning, Sony announced that physical PlayStation game discs will cease production in 2028 and, well… I'm not surprised, I'm just disappointed. I've been a physical game collector for years, but the writing's been on the wall pretty much since the start of the PS4 generation. The advantages of digital distribution are too numerous to count – if you're a game publisher. But for those of us out here actually buying and playing games, the consequences are vast and severe even for players who prefer the digital format.

The existence of digital distribution has been a net positive for gaming, since it's allowed small and mid-sized developers to create games and sell them to a wide audience they never would've been able to reach before. Without digital game sales, the likes of Stardew Valley, Hades, and Terraria simply would not exist. But while I'm happy to support indie developers by buying their digital games, if I'm faced with a choice between paying $70 (or, at this point, $80) for a physical game or a digital one, I'm going for the physical option every time.

Preserving the past

Despite the fact that some (not all, not even most, but some) discs are essentially unlock keys that contain very little game data, they are still physical objects that hold value in the real world. I can lend these discs to friends, or sell them on eBay, or use them to revisit favorite old titles instead of rebuying the latest remaster – all things that, presumably, publishers like Sony would prefer us not to do.

The vast majority of current game discs, which do contain fully playable game installs, are essential to ensuring the games of today remain available in the future. Sony is proving this true even now as it promises (for real this time) to shut down the PS3 and Vita stores. The same thing has already happened with Wii, Wii U, 3DS, and Xbox 360 online stores, and while users admirably still have the ability to redownload purchased games on those platforms, if you want to go back and play a digital-only release you might have missed out on in that era, your only option is piracy.

The secondhand NES that I got as a kid in the '90s still works, albeit with a bit of repair work. The same goes for all of my old games, with many hundreds of other titles still available to buy secondhand. When I spent $700 on a PS5 Pro, my expectation was that it, too, would continue to work for another 30 or 40 years, and that I'd be able to play its library of thousands of games whenever I got around to them. But what good is the promise of that investment when the PS6 comes around and every single game I purchase is tied to a server that Sony could choose to shut down at any time?

Protecting the future

With the end of physical games, PlayStation now controls its entire ecosystem, just as the company once ridiculed Xbox for trying to do in 2013. The company can now ensure it gets a cut of every single game sold on its platforms, with no threat of players spending their money on cheaper used titles. And without a genuine market for new and used retail games to determine what people actually want to pay, we're about to enter a new Wild West for pricing.

This future is all the more concerning given the "dynamic" pricing that Sony is already experimenting with on the PlayStation Store. With a retail game, everyone sees the same, clearly marked retail price. In an all-digital ecosystem, that clarity is gone, replaced by an individual price for each user, with little clarity about who's getting which price and why.

This threat is not purely theoretical. It's called surveillance pricing, where online retailers use your personal data to set prices according to whatever they think you're willing to pay. In most cases, competing retailers carry similar products so that if, say, Instacart decides to gouge you on grocery prices, you can at least use a different service or head to a local store.

PC games have, of course, effectively been digital only for years without running these sorts of scams, but PC is an open platform. If Steam were to suddenly take a dramatic turn for the worse, alternatives like GOG, Humble, or even the dreaded Epic Games Store could start to pick up the slack. Sites like IsThereAnyDeal already keep PC stores honest with comparative pricing history going back years.

But as of January 2028, the PlayStation Store will be the only place you can buy new PlayStation games, barring whatever mysterious format these now discless games show up at retail in. I've got my fingers crossed that Sony decides not to, you know, be evil, but my willingness to trust corporate altruism is pretty low these days. The end of physical discs benefits no one but Sony and, perhaps, the increasingly small handful of AAA publishers.

Get these upcoming PS5 games on discs while you still can.

As Sony announces it's doing away with new disc releases in 2028, people are recalling the big song and dance the company made about physical games and game sharing to dunk on the Xbox One back when the PS4 was announced.

Back in 2013, Xbox made headlines thanks to its DRM policies, which was the beginning of the tailspin the console has been in ever since, and a way for Sony to capitalize on it, giving the PS4 the starting momentum it needed after a weaker PS3 generation to become one of the most successful consoles of all time.

Former president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America, Jack Tretton, got on stage at E3 2013 off the back of Xbox's disastrous showing and announced, "PS4 won't impose any new restrictions on the use of PS4 game discs," and was cut off by mass applause. He highlighted many ways a PS4 disc can be used, capping off with the fact that you can "keep it forever."

Jack Trenton on stage at Sony's E3 2013 press conference says PS4 discs will let players keep their games forever to roaring applause in the room.

— @ethangach.bsky.social (@ethangach.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-07-01T15:53:47.784Z

Following that same E3 presentation, Sony released the "Official PlayStation Used Game Instructional Video" which featured former president of SIE Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida and ex-vice president of third-party relations Adam Boyes simply handing a game over to each other. A move that has been remembered to this day, only now it'll be remembered with a heap of irony.

And here we are. One console generation later, and Sony is now in the mood to kill off its physical game production forever, which means you'll be stuck to digital purchases – which Sony has recently proven it can just wipe off your account (with movies, at least – thanks, Kotaku). It's also a signal that the PS6 could have a terrible approach to backwards compatibility if you're unable to use PS5 discs with it, with the chance of the next console having a disc drive now seeming significantly less likely.

PlayStation Store on PS3 and Vita to shut down 5 years after Sony first decided against it – starting as soon as next month in some regions.

It's the end of an era – Sony has announced that it's officially closing down the PlayStation Store on PS3 and Vita… five years after it first decided that was a bad idea.

Announcing it in a blog post today, Sid Shumen, senior director of Sony Interactive Entertainment's content communications, writes: "After nearly two decades of supporting the PS3 console generation, we wanted to let you know we will be closing the PlayStation Store on PS3, as well as on PS Vita."

Getting déjà vu? You might remember that we've been here before. Sony announced this was going to happen back in 2021, before it quickly U-turned on the decision and kept the stores running. Now, though, we're running out of luck.

For some regions, the closure is as early as next month. For Mexico, Honduras, and Nicaragua, "PlayStation Store on PS3 will close starting August 2026," it's stated. Then, for "additional Latin American and Middle Eastern countries," the PS3 store will close in late 2026. Finally, "in all other countries, PlayStation Store on PS3 and PS Vita will close in July 2027."

"We know this news may be disappointing to PS3 and PS Vita players who hold a special place in their hearts for this generation of gaming. PS3 and PS Vita represent an important era in our PlayStation history, so this was not an easy decision for us to make," the post reads.

"As we continue to expand the PlayStation experience on newer devices that most of our users are playing on today, we need to focus more resources on delivering the best gaming experiences on these platforms as we look ahead towards the future."

But why now?

Sony explains: "As the PlayStation Store continues to evolve to support modern commerce systems, including updated payment processing standards, PS3 and PS Vita are no longer able to support these updates at the level required."

At the very least, while you won't be able to make new purchases, you will still be able to redownload any previously purchased content.

It's reminiscent of Nintendo's decision to close the Wii U and 3DS eShops in 2023 – a huge blow to fans, and also potentially a devastating loss for game preservation as it becomes harder and harder to access older releases.

PlayStation is ending physical disc production for new games in 2028 as Sony says "general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs."

It's official – Sony has just announced that, in a couple of years, it'll no longer support the production of physical discs for new games on consoles like the PlayStation 5 and PS5 Pro.

The trend of moving away from physical discs in favor of digital codes has been a hot topic for the past couple of years, to say the least. Games like GTA 6 immediately spring to mind, and it's certainly not the only title to ship out codes in boxes rather than, you know, actual discs. In fact, discs might soon end up being a thing of the past entirely.

In a new blog post, Sony explains that they will be for PlayStation consoles anyway – much to many players' dismay, I'm sure.

"As consumer preferences and the broader entertainment industry continue to shift away from physical discs to digital, physical game disc production for all new games releasing on PlayStation consoles will be discontinued starting January 2028," says Sid Shumen, senior director of SIE's content communications.

"Following this date, new games will be available on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only." The post does however clarify, "This transition has no impact on games that already released, or will be releasing, prior to January 2028 in disc format" – although I'm not sure that softens the blow here by much.

Sony states that it will "continue to prioritize our resources to drive innovation in how players can access games and provide choices as to where players prefer to purchase new games, whether that's at retailers or PlayStation Store," concluding, "We remain committed to delivering a world-class gaming experience to our fans and we thank you for your continued support."

There's no telling how the community will react just yet, but I have a feeling a lot of folks won't exactly be thrilled. Heck, many of us still collect physical media – including games, of course – and Sony isn't the first to let those of us who do down in this sense.

Nintendo sparked similar controversy with its introduction of game-key cards on the Switch 2 last year – and that wasn't even a 100% wipe of physical copies like Sony's is going to be in a couple of years on PlayStation consoles.

Regardless of how we feel, though, times are definitely changing.

I'd suggest anyone who isn't looking forward to the 2028 change from Sony snag whatever physical releases they can for now... backlogs be damned.

Multiple retailers drop GTA 6 after physical version is confirmed to be a code in a box.

With GTA 6's physical edition now confirmed to be nothing more than a code in a box, you'd be forgiven for fearing that every AAA game is set to follow suit. Well, it seems Marvel's Wolverine is at least safe from that particular mark of shame. In the wake of a new wave of concerns from game collectors, developer Insomniac Games has confirmed, thankfully, that the physical version is a real one.

"The physical version will include a disc in box," Insomniac says on Twitter, making its stance perfectly clear in response to a question from one concerned fan. In fairness, first-party, Sony-published PS5 games have shown no signs of ditching discs just yet, but here in 2026 you can never be perfectly certain.

GTA 6 (like Mario Kart World before it) has also seemingly opened the gates for $80 games, but that's another path Wolverine won't be following. In response to another player begging the studio not to charge more than $70 for Wolverine, Insomniac simply tweeted a link to the game's PlayStation Store page – where it is, of course, listed for $69.99. You can pay $80 if you really want the Deluxe Edition, though.

Rockstar's next game was likely always going to sell boatloads regardless of price, and it seems unlikely that what's effectively a digital-only launch will slow down GTA 6's momentum at all. Physical game sales are actually slightly up in 2026, but disc-buying hold-outs are still a far, far smaller audience than the one GTA 6 is courting.

Multiple retailers drop GTA 6 after physical version is confirmed to be a code in a box.

Josh Sawyer, best known for his work on RPG gems like Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity, says Sucker Punch Productions and Sony Interactive Entertainment created some of the greatest armor sets he's seen in video games.

To be precise, the developer and publisher did so in Ghost of Tsushima and its more recent sequel, Ghost of Yotei.

Speaking in a new Q&A on YouTube, Sawyer admits as much, first explaining that artists gain far more freedom during development when they don't have to "worry about every single part of the body" separately or "follow very strict rules for where every part of armor is broken up."

Not only does it look great, though, but it's technically more practical as well. "The stat bonuses are all built into one suit of armor, and the themes can be just built right around that," Sawyer describes. "All the stats just grow in a very straightforward way."

He does go on to share the appeal of other systems, in which armor sets are "divided" differently and allow the players, rather than the artists, "a lot more freedom," too, though.

Honestly, I feel as though varying armor systems fit well in their respective games – much like Ghost of Tsushima and Yotei's do. It's part of the core identity that titles, especially RPGs, carry with them… and there's no one right way to do it.

Itching to play something fun yourself? Browse through our roundup of the best RPGs out there, or check out a few of the most exciting new games coming this year and beyond.

It seems like it's been an eternity since PlayStation and Xbox were both moving toward multiplatform releases for big first-party titles. As Xbox seemingly returns to the idea of good old-fashioned console exclusives, reporting from Bloomberg suggests PlayStation is doing the same on PC, opting for first-party releases that stay on PS5 permanently instead of coming to other platforms after a period of timed exclusivity. Now, we have comment from PlayStation CEO Hideaki Nishino that seems to add further weight to that reporting.

In the latest issue of Japanese magazine Famitsu, spotted and machine-translated by Resetera user Red Kong XIX, Nishino responds to reports that PlayStation is stepping away from releasing first-party single-player games on non-PlayStation platforms.

As we've come to expect from CEOs of massive companies, his words are vague, and there's an inherent fuzziness to machine-translated quotes, but the implication reads pretty clear to me and mirrors Bloomberg's reporting: first-party single-player games will be PS5 exclusives, while live-service games will continue to be multiplatform. Still, it sounds like Sony will consider each release on a case-by-case basis.

The machine translation reads:

"We've always determined platform selection based on the characteristics of each title. If releasing a title on PC would maximize the gaming experience, we'll continue to consider that option. Our current main policy is that, for single-player games developed in-house, we will further refine the value of the gaming experience that PlayStation can offer.

"At the same time, we believe it is important for live-service games to reach a wider audience through online multiplayer, so we continue to view releases on both PS5 and PC as the standard. Regardless of the platform, we will make decisions based on the principle of delivering the best possible gaming experience that maximizes each title's unique features."

Commenting on Nishino's remarks today, Bloomberg's Jason Schreier adds, "there's no 'case by case' here" and PlayStation Studios' single-player swings will all be PlayStation exclusives.

Sony never embraced multiplatform releases to the same degree as Xbox, which ported major first-party Xbox games like Sea of Thieves, Grounded, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and others to PS5 before the foundational leadership shakeup in February 2026 that saw longtime Xbox boss Phil Spencer and president Sarah Bond leave the company.

PlayStation warmed up to PC with ports of big games like Horizon, The Last of Us, and Marvel's Spider-Man, but straight-up Xbox versions of PlayStation games never became commonplace, and it sounds like even PC is being reconsidered now, at least when it comes to the sort of big-budget, narrative-driven titles the PlayStation brand is synonymous with.

Releasing PlayStation games day one on PC isn't "a good strategy" for its AAA titles, former Sony head says, but he hasn't seen proof its abandoning the platform altogether.

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 seemed to have been put to bed as developer Insomniac switched its focus to the upcoming Marvel's Wolverine, but apparently there's at least one more surprise in store. Alongside the release of today's Spider-Man: Brand New Day trailer, Insomniac revealed that Spidey's new look is coming to the game in a free update on PS5 and PC.

"Get a fresh start in Marvel's Spider-Man 2," the studio exclaims in a tweet. "Swing across skylines in Peter Parker's 'Fresh Start' suit inspired by the upcoming film, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, in theatres July 31! The suit will be available in-game via update July 28 on PS5 and PC at no additional cost!" You can get a very brief look at the new suit at the end of the trailer below.

The game already features an array of suits paying tribute to Spider-Man's varied appearances across different media, including designs inspired by both the Sam Raimi films and the modern MCU movies. But this update is particularly notable simply because it's the first major change to the game in over a year.

In fact, the last update of any kind for Spider-Man 2 appears to have been a May 2025 hotfix for the PC version. That version, of course, launched some time after the PS5 original, and brought with it the sad news that no story DLC was planned for the game, despite some seemingly obvious teases for it in one of the side stories.

With that in mind, it's notable that Spider-Man 2 is getting what's likely its final update in time for the upcoming film. Any excuse to go swinging through digital NYC again is a good one in my mind.

These are the best Marvel games of all time.

This Summer Game Fest graced us with our first look at God of War Laufey, a brand-new God of War title from Santa Monica Studio and Sony Interactive Entertainment.

The big reveal came during the PlayStation State of Play showcase, promising a game that places us in the shoes of Kratos' late wife Faye rather than the demigod son of Zeus.

It's undeniably stunning, but a quick watch of God of War Laufey's new trailer sparks a very important question – might we see gods that Kratos himself killed in the series' past titles, judging by the new deities we'll evidently run into?

GamesRadar+ had the opportunity to ask director Ariel Lawrence if allowing players to run into previously butchered gods is something Santa Monica has considered at all – and, yeah, the future looks bright.

"I think that's definitely the kind of long-term potential for a franchise that has killed as many gods as we have," explains the lead, "being able to see what happens in a place where those folks could come together."

Understandably, though, Lawrence doesn't want to give away too much – although it sounds like whatever gods we do bump into will have to fit into the grander story.

"But we also want to make sure that the people that you're running into, that all [is supported] in the story," she says. "I'm not going to make promises about how many of those people we may or may not come in contact with, but yes, I think as a possibility… absolutely."

That's certainly exciting to hear – heck, it almost sounds like God of War Laufey itself could perhaps re-introduce some of these older gods… but I suppose that only time can tell now.

Thankfully, there's likely not too long left to wait. Judging by all of the gameplay that Sony highlighted during its event, the new Santa Monica title appears to be quite far in its development already. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a 2027 release, personally.

Until then, there are plenty of brutal beasts and gods to take on in God of War Laufey's iconic predecessors… so I'll be doing just that for the time being.

As God of War Laufey puts Kratos to one side, its director hopes "we can keep telling stories about everybody going forward."

Devastating news, folks: They did not, in fact, perform motion capture on a cube for God of War Laufey. At least not in a way that was critical for animating The Boys star Jack Quaid's geometric character Phranque.

Speaking to GamesRadar+, God of War Laufey director Ariel Lawrence said the ridiculous-looking PVC mocap rig Quaid wore in the Meet the Cast video was mostly for show.

"We mocap a little bit, like we have a marker for him to be able to be directional on set," she explained. But instead of actually translating the rig into a 3D model, it helps the team figure out the blocking, or where the actors should be standing, for each scene.

Regardless, Lawrence said strapping a bunch of PVC pipes to Quaid is "not super required, but it is a lot of fun."

I can't blame Sony Santa Monica for that. If you have the opportunity and the resources to do that to a Hollywood actor, you might as well. Say what you will about Sony's obsession with cinematic storytelling in its games, but you can't deny that it commits to authenticity no matter what.

And you can already see it in the relatively small bit of God of War Laufey that we saw earlier this week. Doborah Ann Woll plays Faye as a stubborn warrior who has no sympathy for the nasty gods of the afterlife, even spitting in their faces when she has no upper hand. The fact that Sony went through the effort to put the actors behind the talking cube and sword in the same room is impressive and grounds an otherwise absurd group of characters.

Frankly, I need to know how many hours Quaid spent looking like he's wearing a work-in-progress Halloween costume. The PVC wouldn't weigh you down much, but it certainly might cause some problems maneuvering around groups of people. We can only hope Sony is filming a full documentary so we can see more.

God of War Laufey director Ariel Lawrence hopes Faye is a character "we can keep telling stories about"

The first lesson you learn when reading about mythological gods is that a lot of them are self-centered jerks. God of War is basically an entire series about this fact, and God of War Laufey will be no different.

"They're all assholes," Sony Santa Monica's head of creative Cory Barlog told IGN of the gods you'll meet in the upcoming game. It's not just the towering Mongolian god of war and his violent Egyptian partner who we saw in the initial footage that will be a thorn in your side. Everyone with a divine past in the Everywhen, God of War Laufey's new setting, will be insufferable to be around.

Barlog compares it to an island full of billionaires: "They think they're gonna have a happy life. No, they're all going to fight each other, they're all going to be in this strange sense of conflict because they're locked in a prison."

It probably won't help that the Everywhen is the afterlife for gods, a big bucket of bitter beings who didn't all die willingly. On some level, I can understand why it might be frustrating to have to deal with a stubborn woman and her talking cube and sword friends on top of everything else. Like a ridiculous sitcom plot, I fully expect their refusal to communicate will be the reason protagonist Faye's journey will be dozens of hours longer than it needs to be.

Nobody playing a God of War game will complain if that also means taking these miserable gods on in one-on-one combat, though. Part of the pitch for God of War Laufey seems to include the catharsis of putting some of these gods in their place. That Mongolian brute Begtse absolutely deserved everything Faye did to him in the boss battle we saw.

All of this begs the question though: If Faye isn't technically a god but a giant, does she count as one of them? I imagine we'll learn a lot about her past when God of War Laufey comes out and that might include some things that aren't necessarily flattering.

"God of War Laufey can be enjoyed completely standalone," says Sony, but you should play 2018 God of War and Ragnarok "to fully appreciate the world"

The recently revealed State of Play showstopper God of War Laufey is the upcoming third game in Sony Santa Monica's Norse Era, serving not as a prequel but as a continuation of the saga running in tandem with the first game, and PlayStation is handing out the green light to play Laufey without knowing anything about its predecessors.

Obviously, PlayStation is the expert on its own games – and has a commercial interest in making its new releases look approachable – but I'm gonna go ahead and say you should probably disregard its guidance here and just play 2018 God of War and God of War Ragnarok before Laufey.

In the FAQ section on the official PlayStation website, Sony says "God of War Laufey can be enjoyed completely standalone," but even the publisher itself can't deny the status of the previous two games. "To fully appreciate the world and characters, players should play both God of War (2018) and God of War Ragnarök – both of which are available on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 consoles, and on PC." (Laufey, however, seemingly won't come to PC, just like every other future, major, first-party, single-player PlayStation game.)

That is the way. As hyped as I am for God of War Laufey – and I really am excited – you'd be doing a disservice skipping the other games, both from a narrative perspective and simply because they bang. Chiefly, though, new protagonist Faye's journey through the the afterlife of the gods, Everwhen, will surely feel more impactful if you understand the weight of her relationship with Kratos and Atreus, which serves as the emotional bedrock of the first game and is a major narrative thread in Ragnarok as well.

As if I haven't already pitched you a lot of God of War to play, I'd also make the argument that the old Greek games are worth playing ahead of God of War Laufey if you have the time. They're not nearly as crucial as the Norse games, but playing them will definitely add some color and history to the world, and to Kratos, and give you an added layer of appreciation for Laufey's more acrobatic fighting style.

God of War Laufey is exactly how I want the series' combat to evolve, from the return of aerial combos to hitting dudes so hard their souls fly out.

Everyone clowned on him. No one took him seriously. Phranque, the talking cube guy from the God of War Laufey reveal trailer took a lot of crap for cramping everyone's otherwise pristine style with its gelatinous spatial symmetry, but I knew all along there's more to Phranque than meets the eye. Even here at work, watching the showcase with my normy peers, I was forced to defend him from all sorts of slander. "Everyone hates Frank the gelatinous cube," said one GR+ news editor Iain Harris. I seethed, praying for cube's redemption, and it came quicker than I expected.

All over the internet, hardworking amateur historians are piecing together the puzzle like a mythological Rubik's Cube, and miraculously, a genuinely convincing theory has emerged. The first, as highlighted by GameSpot, is that the cube is a physical manifestation of Metatron's Cube, a device used by Archangel Metatron of Jewish celestial tradition to oversee the flow of energy bridging the mortal Earth and the immortal wisdom of the divine.

According to Learn Religions, in the field of sacred geometry, Metatron's Cube "represents the patterns that make up everything God has made" and "contains every shape that exists in the universe God has created, and those shapes are the building blocks of all physical matter."

More importantly, the publication points to works such as Doreen Virtue's 'Archangels 101'; which says Metatron uses his cube "for healing and clearing away lower energies" and that "you can call upon Metatron and his healing cube to clear you"; and 'Metatron: Invoking the Angel of God's Presence', in which Rose VanDen Eynden writes that the cube can be used to facilitate "human spiritual progression." Both of those uses sound pretty, well, useful to God of War protagonist Laufey as she finds herself trapped in the horrible afterlife realm of Everywhen.

Still not sold? "The geometric perfection of Metatron's Cube represents the underlying order of the cosmos," per Pardesco. Everywhen, essentially the afterlife for the gods, is frequently described as a chaotic realm of disorder where power-hungry gods vie for control in a constant state of disarray. Something like Metatron's Cube could really come in handy there, don't you think?

Again, this is just a theory, and there are certainly others that make some sense, but my money's on Phranque being some sort of representation of Metatron's Cube. He's clearly positioned as a companion to the player character, offering up assists in battle, but PlayStation says he'll also "do whatever it takes to protect his friends and the creatures of the Everywhen." Seeing as Metatron's Cube is frequently cited as a symbol of protection in ancient geometry, and, you know, it's a cube, it seems a reasonable enough stab in the dark while we wait for the game to release and answer all of the universe's mysteries.

God of War Laufey's release reportedly isn't "years away," but don't expect a PC launch

While Marvel's Wolverine clearly builds on developer Insomniac's previous Spider-Man games, there's one key area where it's very different: this is not an open-world game. Insomniac has now fully confirmed that Wolverine is a linear game, and that decision is to ensure that the story properly captures Logan's essence.

"We did not set out to make an open world game or a sandbox game," game director Mike Daly tells IGN. "What we really wanted was high octane, high intrigue, linear single-player adventure, and the missions reflect that in their structure."

I think that's a very good thing. The Marvel's Spider-Man games are excellent in part because of their open worlds, as getting to explore the digital New York City makes it feel more real, and Spider-Man's speedy web-slinging makes the checklists breezy and entertaining to complete. But not every AAA game needs to offer an open world, and doing it here wouldn't really serve Wolverine's character.

"Going back to the beginning when we asked ourselves, how do we make the best Wolverine game possible that represents that character?" Daly muses. "We thought about, Logan's a character who basically travels the world, has traveled the world many times over. He's pulled by a search for his past. He's pushed by a sense of duty. And to that end, we decided that a globe-hopping adventure was the right take for this game. Logan is not a character that's anchored in a particular place and spends a lot of time on it."

Daly adds that the trailer we saw at PlayStation State of Play is "representative" of the pacing of the action in the full game. "Logan's got a lead, he's got a direction, but he has agency in how he decides to approach it," the director explains. As we see in the video, you'll have the option of whether or not to engage in stealth, and perhaps some different ways to approach a given encounter, as well as "some optional content and collectibles along the way."

The devs are also making sure that there are "different flavors of gameplay" along the way, too, where some "are more about observation and traversal, some are more about finding characters to interact with, and a lot of them are about stalking enemies and taking them out."

Spider-Man's open world made sense, since he's a character known for sticking to one place and becoming a part of its identity. For Wolverine, who we more often than not see on the road, rambling from place to place, sticking him on a roller coaster feels a lot more natural.

Marvel's Wolverine lets you turn off the extreme blood and gore proudly shown at PlayStation's State of Play: "We didn't want to go over the top."

Sony Santa Monica stole the show at last night's State of Play with 20 minutes of gameplay footage from the newly announced God of War Laufey, the next installment in the studio's reboot series. The not-prequel stars a brand new protagonist in Kratos's second wife and Atreus's mother, Faye, and her distinctly agile move set was put on full display toward the end of the showcase, revealing a huge contrast with Kratos's brawny, lumbering movement.

In a 'meet the cast' video accompanying God of War Laufey's announcement, Faye actor Deborah Ann Woll compares the two protagonists' very different playstyle's, describing Kratos as "a heavy hitter" and Laufey as "acrobatic."

"I love how acrobatic Faye is. I think the Kratos gameplay is so fantastic because he's such a heavy hitter and he has that brute force," she says. "And Faye is just as strong and just as good a warrior, but her gameplay is spinning and whipping and flipping, and it's in the air, and we can show that there are so many ways to be a warrior."

As someone who generally prefers fast, fluid, theatrical combat to the high-gravity feel of 2018 God of War and Ragnarok, I'm absolutely psyched for Laufey. Don't get me wrong, those previous games both have great combat, but I played them more for the worldbuilding and lore, and now Laufey looks like it offers a fresh perspective on that universe as well as a combat system that's a little more up my alley.

Talking to IGN, God of War Laufey director Ariel Lawrence explains how the upcoming game and new hero's combat were influenced by Santa Monica's long history with the series, including the Greek-era God of War games, which featured much more hack-and-slash-style combat compared to the 2018 reboot and Ragnarok.

"Kratos is like a brick wall, and he's a little stoic, but it's just that his brutality is different," Lawrence says. "How do we show somebody who's his equal as she is? So when we looked, we got to think about all the [Santa Monica] games. The Greek era had an influence on Faye. The Norse era has an influence on Faye. So going to our more agile combat roots but also retaining our companions, our gritty closer combat. How do those marry together and then make something that's uniquely Faye-feeling while still being a Santa Monica game?"

God of War Laufey's release reportedly isn't "years away," but don't expect a PC launch

God of War Laufey will be the first time the series abandons its titular god Kratos and focuses instead on someone else's magic – in this case, Kratos' dead wife Laufey, or Faye, as the giantess navigates the perilous afterlife run by power-starving deities. The 20 minutes of footage developer Sony Santa Monica shared at PlayStation State of Play June 2026 makes the game look prettier than usual, with so many sparkles, purple flowers, and exceptionally cool aerial combos, but head of creative Cory Barlog says it's not really a series "departure."

He elaborates in a conversation with God of War Laufey game director Ariel Lawrence recently posted on the PlayStation Youtube. Barlog acknowledges that zooming in on the soft, kind, formidable mother Faye is "a different thing" than focusing on the permanently scowling dad Kratos, but God of War Laufey is "still part of the larger tapestry of what we truly, really want to explore, all of these different characters in there."

Crucially, for fans who already miss their frowning father, Barlog confirms that "there's always going to be Kratos games." He reiterates this in a new IGN interview, too, reminding fans Sony will "always tell stories about Kratos."

But with Kratos being a given, God of War Laufey instead gives "us some place" for the now nearly 10-year-old reboot series to make us "surprised and see how things connect," Barlog says. "So for us, it's not a departure; it's more of an expansion."

Nevertheless, even game director Ariel Lawrence says she was "a little shocked" to learn she would lead a game about Faye rather than "another Kratos game," since she had assumed "I would be telling stories about [Kratos] for the rest of my life."

But Barlog says, "For me, it's really exciting because, again [...] Kratos is sort of the" – "the trunk of our tree," Lawrence interjects. Barlog agrees, describing stoic Kratos as the 1,000-pound truck that "drives the franchise forward, and we want to follow him. But there are so many interesting characters that we created along the way."

I think Laufey, in particular, has been a looming shadow for so long, it's made me desperate to know her. It's her death that sets Sony Santa Monica's God of War series in motion, after all, and other characters speak of her with such reverence, I feel like I have to experience what she's like for myself. So I see God of War Laufey as finally addressing that need, at the perfect time (because I'd find any time perfect).

God of War Laufey is exactly how I want the series' combat to evolve, from the return of aerial combos to hitting dudes so hard their souls fly out.

Sony's State of Play is set to return next month, and it looks like Marvel's Wolverine is taking top billing among all the other updates on PS5 games, old and new, we'll see.

That all comes from Sony itself, which says the showcase will take place on June 2 and feature "60 minutes of updates, announcements, and gameplay reveals from top studios around the world."

As for what you can expect to see, you'll largely have to wait and find out. To tide you over until then, though, Sony does reveal we're getting a closer look at Marvel's Wolverine ahead of its September 15 release.

"Insomniac Games will share more from its upcoming third-person action-adventure game, showing off Logan's brutal and relentless combat along with some new details," the PlayStation maker teases.

If you're keen to get that in your calendar, Sony says the State of Play kicks off at 2pm PT – that's 5pm ET / 11pm CEST if you're elsewhere in the world. As ever, you can watch it on YouTube and Twitch, and expect the whole thing to last around an hour.

It's been a long ol' road for Insomniac's Wolverine game – in fact, one voice actor says he's been working on it nearly as long as his son has been alive. We've seen periods of silence followed by a substantial data breach before the game showed itself off good and proper – and officially.

Marvel's Wolverine is currently set to release this fall. That said, if recent reports are to be believed, I wouldn't hold out on that one coming to the likes of PC.

As Halo and Forza Horizon 6 prepare to jump ship to PS5, Xbox fans use new community voting tool to tell Microsoft they want their exclusives back.

New comments from PlayStation Studios CEO Hermen Hulst reportedly confirm the end of Sony's major single-player games coming to PC, affirming earlier claims that the company is pulling back from the platform.

Reiterating the outlet's March report, Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier says on Bluesky: "PlayStation studio business CEO Hermen Hulst told staff in a town hall Monday morning that the company's narrative single-player games will now be PlayStation exclusive, confirming Bloomberg's reporting from earlier this year."

Hulst's exact words are unknown, but the message seems clear. Going forward, games like God of War, Marvel's Spider-Man, The Last of Us, and Horizon Zero Dawn – all previously released or remastered on PC sometime after their PlayStation console debut – will no longer be available outside PlayStation hardware.

However, multiplayer games like Helldivers 2 – the crown jewel of Sony's largely disastrous live service push – and upcoming spinoff Horizon Hunters Gathering can still seemingly come to both PC and PlayStation consoles. Helldivers 2 is also on Xbox, which is a non-trivial detail here. PlayStation-backed games in the same vein could potentially come to other consoles in the future as well. Just look at Marathon, a multi-platform shooter made and published by Bungie, a studio that Sony owns.

This decision seems to extend only to major PlayStation studios and single-player IP, not every single-player game that Sony touches. Naughty Dog's Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet is the obvious example; we can seemingly give up on that ever coming to PC, even years down the road like the Uncharted series.

Recently released PS5 shooter Saros also will not come to PC, Schreier affirms in a separate reply, even though developer Housemarque's previous title, Returnal, did (and plays best on PC).

Another useful corner case is found in Kena: Scars of Kosmora, successor to Kena: Bridge of Spirits. Scars of Kosmora is a single-player game but will be published by PlayStation Publishing on Steam and the Epic Games Store. On the PlayStation Store, its publisher is listed as Sony Interactive Entertainment.

Made by independent studio Ember Lab, the subject of considerable promotion by Sony, the single-player Kena duology began on PS4, PS5, and PC in 2021. Bridge of Spirits was later brought to Xbox and Nintendo consoles (published by Ember Lab on all platforms), and the second game is still eyeing PlayStation and PC.

This should not be confused with timed, third-party console exclusives like the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy. That also goes for games like Stellar Blade, a once PS5-exclusive, independently made game which was published – and on PC, co-published – by Sony. In this case, developer Shift-Up has actively pushed to publish Stellar Blade 2 itself.

Horizon Hunters Gathering, a cartoonish take on Monster Hunter, also provides some clarity here. Like Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West, it's made by Guerrilla Games and published on PC by PlayStation. It will seemingly come to PC as planned, not by the same rules as Kena, but because it's a multiplayer game. However, a hypothetical third entry in the mainline Horizon series starring protagonist Aloy would not come to PC under Sony's new direction.

This news also rules out ports for games like Ghost of Yotei, the follow-up to Ghost of Tsushima, which was released on PC in 2024. Yotei was released on PS5 in October 2025, so if PC Tsushima fans want to see what developer Sucker Punch cooked up next, they'll have to buy a console. The same goes for Marvel's Wolverine, Insomniac's next superhero action game after Marvel's Spider-Man.

Releasing PlayStation games day one on PC isn't "a good strategy" for its AAA titles, former Sony head says, but he hasn't seen proof its abandoning the platform altogether.

FromSoftware parent company Kadokawa has just released new financial results revealing the Dark Souls developer is committing to more self-publishing and self-funding while it works on converting video game IP to big deal movies like Elden Ring's.

The Elden Ring movie is already in production under A24 and 28 Days Later writer Alex Garland, who is serving as both its scriptwriter and director, and it's due to release on March 3, 2028. But 2028 feels so far away when Kadokawa predicts 2026 profits will drop something like 40.3％ "due largely to ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN main game and DLC," the company exclaims in its financial report. So, since FromSoftware's catalogue is getting stale, Kadokawa wants another round of everything – more game IP, more film adaptations – as it relies on the Dark Souls developer for business.

"FromSoftware will steadily advance initiatives aimed at maximizing earnings by developing titles using its own capital and optimizing the business scheme including its publishing structure," says Kadokawa. "We are making steady progress in strengthening the ability to develop IP in games and the cultivation of human resources."

On that last point, Kadokawa later explains in its report that it's beginning to roll out a "special early-retirement program" for employees aged 45 and older.

It seems the aim of this program, which will begin on July 31, 2026, is to cull staff numbers, but in a nicer way. Anyone who meets the age and job rank requirements, and has been with Kadokawa for at least five years, will, seemingly, be helped to retire extra early.

"This initiative is expected to optimize fixed costs and improve productivity, directly contributing to improved profitability," says Kadokawa. The company doesn't explicitly state if the program is exclusive to parent company employees, or if it will extend to properties like FromSoftware, too.

Kadokawa is clear, however, in saying it wants FromSoftware to "make further advances in the development of the media mix, including adaptation into videos." Several projects have already been announced in pursuit of this goal: in addition to the Elden Ring film, FromSoftware has a Sekiro anime coming to Crunchyroll this year, and there's an R-rated Bloodborne animated movie in the works.

Side note: I consider myself a Tier 1,000 Bloodborne fan, and even so I'm skeptical when I say fellow superfan and YouTuber JackSepticEye is producing the movie. I'm curious about why Sony prefers a, however well-meaning, gaming personality to manhandle its beloved IP rather than another studio. But, you know. At least we're getting more Bloodborne.

A strong message throughout Kadokawa's report is, go big and FromSoftware. The parent is eager to "further expand the fan base globally," it says, while "FromSoftware is making steady progress in revamping its business model to maximize earnings."

The developer, an expert in punishing dark fantasies, is a strange cash cow with weird lumps and boils. But Kadokawa is clearly hoping that's what game and film audiences want – and, based on all the hours of the day I've lost to Yharnam, I'm inclined to agree.

They can never compete with Elden Ring, but FromSoftware owner says Nightreign "performed strongly" and The Duskbloods is still coming in 2026.

Sony's latest financial report is in, and would you believe it? The company is keen to tell investors just how much its business is going to be improved by AI. PlayStation is just one part of the larger Sony business, but sluggish PS5 sales and big losses around Marathon and Bungie are having their effects. Don't worry, though – PlayStation's investment in AI is going to make it all better, and we've gotten some specifics about how the tech is being used in games like Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered.

"At PlayStation, our goal is always to be the best place to play and the best place to publish," according to Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Hideaki Nishino, whose statements during the earnings call were transcribed by Yahoo Finance. "We see AI as a powerful tool to help us in this mission."

Those are pretty standard vagaries about AI, but Nishino did offer some specifics. Notably, he says, "game developers are automating repetitive workloads, improving software engineering productivity, and accelerating areas like quality assurance, 3D modeling, and animations through new AI-powered tools."

That includes an animation tool called Mockingbird, which "quickly animates 3D facial model based on the performance capture." Nishino emphasizes that this is not a replacement for human performers, but it optimizes "how we process the data from these live captures. With Mockingbird, animation work that would have taken hours can now be completed in a fraction of a second."

This isn't purely theoretical, either. "We have already seen the teams at Naughty Dog, San Diego Studio, and other adopt the tool, including in released titles like Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered," Nishino explains.

While the stink of purely AI-generated content looms large, this is – in theory – the kind of thing AI is actually useful for, helping to automate tedious tasks so that developers can focus their attention on more creative work. That's why you won't find an AI disclosure on Horizon's Steam store page, as Valve doesn't require devs to be up front about "efficiency gains" from AI, as opposed to fully AI-generated content.

Nishino also cites the machine learning-driven PSSR upscaling tech available on PS5 Pro as another example of AI wins, offering improved resolution and performance for games like Saros and Ghost of Yotei. And, more broadly, he says players will get "more immersion, more adventures, and fresh ways to enjoy their favorite characters" thanks to the emerging tech. Simultaneously, AI will offer publishers a "more efficient production environment and a better discovery to ensure their games reach the right audience."

Of course, the reality of these assertions remains to be seen. The biggest effect AI has had on the gaming world so far is making consoles and PCs dramatically more expensive, as data centers gobble up RAM in absurd volumes. That's not Sony's fault or responsibility, of course, but the notion that the tech pushing the game industry's head underwater is the same thing that will save it from drowning is difficult to reckon with in the short term.

PS6 price and release window is still undecided, but Sony reports "an increase in investments" into the next-gen PlayStation.

Guerrilla Games has confirmed another playtest for its Monster Hunter-like co-op Horizon game Hunters Gathering, but the developer warns you probably won't be making it into this playtest, either.

The second batch of Horizon Hunters Gathering playtests are set to take place between May 22 and May 25 on PS5 and PC. Over on the PlayStation Blog, Guerilla detailed what to expect, promising "implemented player feedback" set to be revealed at a later date. There's also more to play with this time.

There will be two new Hunter characters: Ensa – "a charismatic Oseram smuggler with a mercenary past" and Shadow – sadly not the hedgehog, but "a Carja covert operative who commands a fearsome Stalker machine." Plus, another Monster Hunter staple (well, in Sunbreak and Wilds, anyway) is joining the game in the form of Hunter NPCs during Episodes or Machine Incursion modes – the latter of which sounds like a take on Rise's Rampage missions.

Aside from all of that, there's going to be a new Episode added to the game's narrative campaign, as well as new difficulty modes for the Machine Incursion and Cauldron Descent missions found in the previous playtest, and a training mode to help you tackle them. Finally, there's a new area called Breakers' Bounty, which features "dense jungles and ravaged ruins bordering a scorching desert home to dangerous machines."

However, Guerrilla doesn't seem to be adding a significant amount of players this time around, saying, "We want to emphasize again: Horizon Hunters Gathering is a game in development; we choose to playtest early and with small numbers to focus on the core experience and implement player feedback before opening to bigger groups of players. We learn a lot from each playtest and this second one is no different; we appreciate each of you who take the time to leave us your honest thoughts."

When Hunters Gathering was announced a Horizon lead said "we absolutely love making single-player games, and we're going to keep making them," although reports soon surfaced that Horizon 3 is probably not coming for a long time, as "most of the studio" is reportedly working on Hunters Gathering. I'm as skeptical about Sony's live-service ambitions as any, but the Monster Hunter-like genre is woefully underutilized, and if it can result in a Horizon game that I actually like, I may be down.

The Last of Us Online was "the best multiplayer game" many Naughty Dog devs had "ever played," ex game director says.

Xbox Game Pass doesn't have many friends left. Once Microsoft made Game Pass Ultimate 50% more expensive in 2025, fans declared themselves betrayed, and even Xbox co-founder Laura Fryer was shocked by the company's apparent allegiance to "greed over gaming." Former Sony Interactive Entertainment America CEO Shawn Layden now thinks Xbox should just let the floundering subscription service die with dignity, but new Xbox lead Asha Sharma seems to want more time.

This tension between old and new gaming guards unfolded as a LinkedIn drama, as it was always destined to. Layden commented on a post by games industry researcher (and friend of GamesRadar+) Joost van Dreunen sharing that Sharma, in a leaked memo to Xbox staff, agreed, "Game Pass has become too expensive for players." Layden's solution is to smother it with a pillow.

He says about Xbox, proliferating the metaphor, "They are trying so hard to will this into health, despite unfavorable diagnostics and a grim prognosis. A clarifying post mortem would do the entire industry some good."

Former PlayStation head of strategy and development Gabriel Pessah adds, "I second that."

Then Sharma replies two days later, "I would love to chat sometime." It's her first LinkedIn comment in four months, which doesn't necessarily reveal the urgency or tone of her offer – maybe she just forgot her password three-and-a-half months ago – but it does suggest the Xbox lead and games industry newbie is serious about veterans' opinions.

And that, I think, is a good thing for consumers yearning for a time when life was simple and the Xbox Series X wasn't $650. In the leaked memo from Sharma to Xbox employees, the CEO acknowledged this, as she said about Game Pass, "We need a better value equation. Long term, we will evolve Game Pass into a more flexible system which will take time to test and learn around."

It remains to be seen, in a time when life is complicated and everything is an Xbox, if Game Pass is even worth a makeover. But it seems Sharma is going to find out.

You can discover the best Xbox Game Pass deals in April 2026 while we wait.

Shuhei Yoshida, former lead helming Sony's first-party PlayStation Studios, explains he was "fired" from his role for not listening to ex-boss Jim Ryan.

Speaking at Australian festival ALT: GAMES this year, as reported by This Week in Video Games, Yoshida recalls his time at PlayStation Worldwide Studios.

"I helped Santa Monica to make God of War, Naughty Dog to make Uncharted and The Last of Us, and Sucker Punch to make the beautiful Ghost of Tsushima," he says. "Ghost of Tsushima was one of the last games that I worked on as the president of Worldwide Studios."

After helping work on the action-adventure game, Yoshida alleges that's when he was "fired" by Jim Ryan. "But in 2019, after 11 years leading the first-party development, I was fired from the role," he claims – albeit seemingly all in good humor.

"Jim Ryan wanted to remove me from first-party because I didn't listen to him. He asked to do some ridiculous things, and I said, 'No.'" I'll stress the whole "good humor" thing here, though.

After all, Yoshida goes on to look back on how well he and Ryan knew each other: "Because I grew up with Jim from the PS1 days… you don't want to have one of your friends as one of your subordinates."

I do suppose that's true – and Ryan did offer Yoshida his role to improve PlayStation's support of indie development, "because everybody in the company knew how much I loved indie games," as the industry legend puts it.

All in all, Yoshida spent a whopping 31 years at PlayStation in total, retiring in early 2025 after saying, "It may be about time for me to move on."

Searching for something to wishlist? Browse through our roundup of the best new games set to launch this year and beyond for great titles to look forward to.

The sex scenes in the original God of War trilogy are equal parts horny and corny, and the question of whether or not they'll return in the upcoming remakes has been hanging ever since the project was first announced. Original Kratos actor T.C. Carson, who's returning to the role in the remakes, thinks those scenes will return.

He was asked about the return of those "intimate romance minigames" during a panel at MegaCon Orlando. In a clip shared by IGN, Carson responded with a smile: "You know what? All you dudes – all you men – I think so."

Instantly realizing the implications of that comment, he quickly emphasized: "I said 'I think so.' I said 'I think so.'"

So no, this is not confirmation that the sex scenes will be back, but it does seem that Carson believes they'll be in keeping with whatever tone the remakes take. And really, I think tone has been the crux of the question here. The modern God of War titles have been grounded, introspective adventures through the fantastical, while the originals were campy bloodbaths unafraid of throwing in doses of prurient titillation between all the violence.

Naturally, mature storytelling doesn't preclude sex and nudity, as evidenced by games like Baldur's Gate 3. But Larian's RPG offers up steamy romance scenes as a, ahem, climax for a relationship with a fully-formed character. Old God of War's sex takes the form of a baser male-focused fantasy about nameless women throwing their perfect bodies at a chiseled hunk of masculinity.

Is that kind of thing core to the original God of War's identity, or simply a byproduct of the '00s assumption that gamers were mostly teenage boys? That's a question that I suspect Sony is still trying to figure out the answer to as the remake trilogy starts to take shape.

"The God of War sex mini-games were designed by women," former Sony Santa Monica writer says, which is why Aphrodite's bed looks "like a labia."

Sony appears to be attempting its very best Hideo Kojima impression as it announces plans to scan PlayStation fans into its games, so if you're lucky enough, maybe you'll soon have a lookalike living their best life in Gran Turismo 7. For a while, anyway.

In a PlayStation Blog post today, Sony Interactive Entertainment's vice president of global marketing, Isabelle Tomatis, unveiled The Playerbase – described as "a unique opportunity for PlayStation's biggest fans to step into some of the biggest game worlds by having their likeness scanned and appear within a PlayStation game." This idea is first being rolled out to Gran Turismo 7, but "we'll be looking to expand and include fans in additional PlayStation Studios titles in the near future."

Now, as you might expect, this isn't a privilege Sony is granting to literally everyone. In fact, it's incredibly limited, but it's not just a case of being picked in a lucky draw. If you're interested, you'll need to submit an application (which will ask you about your "experiences on PlayStation"), before finalists are selected to participate in video interviews to learn even more about them and their "connection" to the brand. Only then will one person be selected to be given "a special limited-time appearance as an in-game character portrait, similar to how characters are presented throughout the game."

This first example of The Playerbase being used in Gran Turismo 7 doesn't sound nearly as in-depth as, say, the celebrity cameos Kojima put into Death Stranding and its sequel (which include but are no means limited to The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley and VTuber Usada Pekora). In fact, quantity-wise, Kojima put so many famous faces in Death Stranding 2 that the devs apparently ran out of space and ended up having to turn people down.

Compared to those, I imagine that the "limited-time" part of this Gran Turismo 7 fan appearance is going to sound very underwhelming to some after what appears to be such an in-depth application process. But, at the very least, whoever gets picked will also get "invited to a visual arts studio in Los Angeles for a scanning day," and they'll also get to "collaborate with a designer" to make a custom Fantasy Logo, as well as a "one-of-a-kind vehicle livery which will be added permanently to the Showcase menu."

It's got to be said though, it sounds like Sony's bar is extremely high for whoever its winner is. Looking through the frequently asked questions about its criteria, it's stated that a successful application will have to demonstrate your connection to PlayStation, as well as passion for both it and Gran Turismo 7 developer Polyphony Digital, evidenced by "ownership of PlayStation products, subscriptions, games played, hours played, etc.," and things like "ownership of games from those studios, hours played, number and type of game trophies obtained," respectively. This is based both on your initial application and your PlayStation account history.

What's more, anyone who gets through to the video interview stage will have to express an "authentic love for PlayStation" and Gran Turismo 7, and will be judged on how much their interview "includes shareable and entertaining content, while demonstrating that your story is suitably interesting to make further compelling content," amongst other things. I guess it's a positive thing that a huge fan will, in theory, be rewarded for their dedication, but that's a lot of pressure for anyone who wants to throw their hat in the ring.

Anyway, perhaps Sony's Playerbase cameos will become a bit more expansive as time goes on. After all, Tomatis reiterates the plan is to feature fans in "ways that fit each game's own style and world" in the titles of studios that participate in the future. Hell, maybe Death Stranding 2 could even be on that list, considering Sony is the publisher – I'm sure Kojima would be able to show 'em how it's done. For now, though, anyone eligible is able to apply via the official site.

The Last of Us Part 3 hopefuls are convinced Naughty Dog head Neil Druckmann is hinting at another sequel as he teases "the few stops that remain on the road ahead."

The developers behind PS3 emulator RPCS3 have made a breakthrough in their handling of the console's notorious Cell CPU. This is already resulting in notable performance benefits when running some of the PS3's most intensive games, including the 2012 Twisted Metal reboot. Nobody seems more impressed than James Stanard, who served as principal engine developer on the original game.

A big part of the reason PS3 emulation has proven so difficult – and why so few PS3-exclusive games have official modern ports – is because of that complex Cell processor. Our friends at Tom's Hardware have a more technical breakdown, but in essence, the Cell uses up to seven Synergistic Processing Units, and the instructions run by those SPUs have to be translated into a form that modern CPUs can understand.

"We have achieved a new breakthrough on emulating PS3's Cell CPU!" the RPCS3 devs exclaim in a recent tweet. A developer known as Elad has "discovered new SPU usage patterns and coded ways to generate more optimised PC code from them – benefitting all games! Twisted Metal, one of the most SPU-intensive games, sees a 5-7% Average FPS improvement."

You wouldn't necessarily be able to notice a 5% performance increase in the course of normal gameplay, but each incremental improvement to the quality of the emulator compounds with previous gains. For Twisted Metal, the devs say "we're close to achieving 60 FPS on the highest end hardware that exists today – double the console performance that is locked at 30 FPS." And while low-end CPUs might not hit that frame rate target, they also stand to benefit from these improvements.

"I wrote 90% of the SPU code in Twisted Metal," according to James Stanard, responding to RPCS3's demonstration of the performance gains. (Thanks, Time Extension.) "I'm proud that it got called out for being SPU-intensive. It sure was! We basically maxed out the PPU, SPUs, and RSX all at the same time."

Addressing the RPCS3 devs directly, Stanard adds, "Amazing work. I was convinced at the time that PS3 would never be emulateable!"

Certainly, the difficulty of emulating PS3 games has been a thorn in the side of preservationists and publishers who simply want to resell their old games. The upcoming release of Metal Gear Solid 4 as part of Konami's next MGS Master Collection is a moment I wasn't sure would ever come, but I think the continued breakthroughs in RPCS3 emulation are likely far more important to making sure the PS3's library is preserved for the future.

It's getting easier than ever to enjoy the best PS3 games.

PlayStation's PS PC unit earned only a total of $300 million between 2021 and 2023, former PC planner and insights manager Jerry Liu reveals.

Liu added the detail to his LinkedIn profile, spotted by industry sleuth Timur222 on Bluesky. Liu's profile now explains he helped PS PC "grow from $0-300M in Net Revenue for Sony in 3 years" by, among other things, convincing "leadership to pursue more aggressive pricing strategy that helped to increase gross revenue of the business unit by 25%+." But while PlayStation continues to use – let's say it politely – asseritve pricing with console sales, it's reportedly retreating from PC altogether.

That rumor is less surprising when you compare Liu's PC sales numbers to Sony's public sales data; it took PS PC three years to go from 0 to $300 million, while total software sales for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 reached $303 million in just 2021. In 2022, the consoles made $264 million for the year, and $286 in 2023 – all of which adds up to nearly triple the amount of revenue PS PC was able to squeak through in the same amount of time.

When you factor in PlayStation hardware sales, too – the PS4 sold more than 117 million units worldwide as of 2022, and the PS5 sold over 92.1 million units by 2025 – PlayStation on PC looks even more like an unappetizing hunk of bread.

Still, Liu's revelation helps us complete our imperfect understanding of PlayStation's motivations lately. The publisher might fear the flexibility of hardware rivals like Valve and its all-purpose Steam Machine, but it's also been shutting down first-party, AAA studios and walking away from mobile with less obvious direction besides the desire we also observe in other developers: dump everything except what could make the most impossible sum of money. And PS PC doesn't make money on the level that Sony's looking for.

Epic Games lays off "over 1,000" people, CEO Tim Sweeney says "I'm sorry we're here again" and blames "the downturn in Fortnite engagement."

Even though I've only gone hands-on with Saros for three hours so far, blasting and shielding my way through the Returnal spiritual successor's first two levels, it's already shaping up to be one of the best PS5 games of the year. While Returnal was an impressive release, Saros is shaping up to really reflect how much better Housemarque have gotten at getting the most out of the console. I liked Returnal a lot, but I felt like I didn't love it as much as everyone else. But, that makes it even more exciting that I love Saros so much, and it's well worth making sure this roguelike shooter is on your new releases radar.

Saros really feels like a refinement, both of the foundations Housemareque laid with the mysterious, arcadey, "gameplay first" Returnal, but also with the roguelike genre in general. With action dubbed by the developer as "bullet ballet", it's all about weaving through challenging waves of enemies through a beautiful but dangerous alien planet, Carcosa, as it transforms and reshapes across each run. There's a lot to love, but these seven Saros features are the ones that I'm digging the most so far, and really help it stand out as having the potential to be one of the best roguelike games I'll keep coming back to long after its April 30 launch.

7. Absorbing bullets

While Returnal was all about running away from and weaving through massive patterns of bullets, Saros adds a new option – why not run into them? Not quite counter-intuitive, but instead a sort of new third thing, using your shield to negate damage costs energy, but absorbing bullets rewards you with greater energy than you expend. That means once you start sucking in bullets you can keep going as long as you're not keeping it active for too long between shots. It also means you can spend the overcharged energy on brutal power shots. These special attacks come in several weapon varieties – but they all have explosive results. Sometimes, with absorbing corrupted shots, that means temporarily risking lowering your maximum armor health as well, meaning how you choose to dodge, jump, or plow into each wave of enemy fire has a real tactical edge.

6. Enter the matrix

Saros is far from the first roguelike game to feature a permanent progression mechanic that helps you get stronger with each successive run, but I really love the way Housemarque has carefully balanced maintaining challenge while also allowing players to make the action a little easier. The Armor Matrix is a skilltree that raises hero Arjun's base powers, and also unlocks new abilities to give him an edge in tough encounters. After defeating a couple of bosses, Carcosan Modifiers can be activated, allowing you to balance buffs and debuffs, exchanging a higher difficulty in areas you may feel more confident for benefits elsewhere – like increasing enemy damage to balance taking on a wider pick-up radius (which, in turn, can help you upgrade faster). Saros still feels tough, but less off-puttingly punishing when you fail – instead it really encourages me to dive back in for another run.

5. Shorter sprints

Returnal's roguelike runs could be lengthy, sometimes lasting well over an hour (and it didn't have an autosave at launch). Saros still allows you to tackle environments sequentially once unlocked, but also gives you the option to return to base with a teleporter function that also means you can start off at later areas as well. Housemarque has told me it's specifically aiming for runs to average about 30-minutes of playtime, which feels perfect considering the shield-based combat can feel a lot more intense than Returnal. Rather than having me play for less time, I've so far found the shorter bursts of play actually encouraging me to dive back in for one more run, rather than leaving me too exhausted to continue.

4. Arjun's journey

Sure, I loved the quiet mystery of Selene's more isolated adventure in Returnal, but so far I'm enjoying that Saros sets itself apart from its predecessor with an easier-to-follow narrative. Played by Rahul Kohli, there's star power here – but only as much as you want it. Audio logs, crew conversations, and investigating Carcosa's ruins aren't mandatory, but how can I say no? I'm already loving the cinematic flair to the handful of cutscenes I've seen so far, and it just makes it a lot easier to get hooked into Saros' narrative. Replaying levels across my three hours with the game, I've already found new bits of lore and information that's rewarded my return visits, and I'm looking forward to unpicking it all in due time.

3. Graphite is beautiful

Saros is a gorgeous-looking game, and Housemarque has taken the time to highlight to me that's partially due to Graphite. This proprietary VFX and Graphics framework leverages the Finnish studio's rich 30-year legacy, and in an introduction to the technology by VFX architect Sharman Jagadeesan, I get the sense we'll be hearing more about it in the future. Not a game engine in and of itself, Graphite is more part of the visual identity of Saros, and is responsible for how the game handles things like particle effects – vital with all the bullets on screen at once. Yes, it has its own global illumination system. No, they're not going to detail how they did it. Take it in, though – because Saros is a stunner. Housemarque has emphasized that while both Saros and Returnal are PS5 games, this new title leverages five more years of experience developing specifically for Sony's powerhouse console.

2. Going the distance

Saros' firefights can get chaotic with loads of orb-shaped bullets flying across the screen at once. So could Returnal, but there, you often had the binary challenge to simply put distance between yourself and the oncoming danger. I really like how Saros encourages me to take risks and to toe the line, often surrounding unblockable lasers with bullets that can be absorbed, daring me to get close to a deadly strike in order to charge up my own powerful counterattacks. Almost like a near miss in something like Crazy Taxi or Burnout, the temptation to stunt on foes really encourages player expression in a neat way, and as I've grown more comfortable with enemy attack patterns, I can already feel myself getting better at assessing when I should take the risk.

1. Watching the Eclipse

Partway through each area I've explored in Saros so far, Arjun has found his progression blocked unless he interfaces with a Carcosan device to activate the planet's strange Eclipse. This lunar energy courses down onto the world, changing the environment around him. So far, this has been the most striking in the Ancient Depths, an abandoned and silent factory that's brought into motion once again, pistons creating new paths forward while also forcing me to avoid re-activated laser cutters and greater numbers of machine enemies. It might be more dangerous, but the Eclipse also brings greater rewards, from upping dropped resources to bigger stat boosts – but they can also come at the cost of accepting debuffs, whether that's adding fall damage or straight up removing an auto lock-on feature of a gun in exchange for much higher damage.

Saros is all about deciding in the heat of the moment just how risky you want to play. It's almost irresistible to not jump straight into the fray, meeting danger head-on – and it's a big reason I'm eager to keep coming back for one more run.

Check out our upcoming PS5 games calendar for what to play next!

"The biggest goal was to make it more of an evolution," says Saros lead game designer Abebe Tinari when I ask about developing a spiritual rather than direct sequel to Housemarque's electric PS5 launch window title. The aim has been to "build off what Returnal established and add elements like the shield, different types of bullets, take the bullet ballet formula, but then bring something new to it."

Central to this vision was "Evolutionizing our gameplay, [and] being more cinematic, as well," adds narrative designer Khalil Osaimi. Specifically, how the team was to "drive the story" through this new, theatrical lens. The result stars Rahul Kohli as Solatari Enforcer Arjun Devraj, on a mission to find out what happened to a lost colony on alien planet Carcosa – and, already, there's more immediate cinematic flair to this tale than Selene's often isolated journey on Returnal.

Prestige power

For starters, Arjun has other survivors of his spaceship crash to talk to between roguelike expeditions into the dangerous world. Each run is designed to last about 30-minutes, there's more narrative hooks for those who want them, and a dedication to "coming back stronger" means Arjun can power-up permanently after each run. Returnal could be challenging to the point it was tough to get into, and while Saros is still difficult, it's aiming to have more options to embrace any players interested.

Going hands-on with the first three hours of Saros for myself, just beating one boss fight after a half an hour run already made me feel tense enough to need a break. I really like having the option to nip back to homebase The Passage to take a breather and level up, and then be able to teleport right back into the action to continue pushing deeper.

"I want to get the player back into the action, but I think that even just speaking personally as a player of Returnal, there were times that after a multi-hour run after dying, my hands were kind of shaking, you know? It was a bit difficult to kind of be like: OK, I'm gonna get right back into it," says Tinari. "I appreciate having that beat to go back to The Passage, talk to some people, get a bit more of that story context, and that allows me just to get into the headspace of going back out there, right? That's reinforced by the Armor Matrix to get a bit stronger, and then you feel like: Yeah, I'm ready for another run."

Having spent three hours playing Saros, I definitely agree. The average time out playing levels in Saros can be shorter (though you can still run environments back to back if you want), but that doesn't necessarily mean my full play sessions will be. If anything, almost like binging a short TV show, the prospect of dipping back in for one more half-hour run feels conducive to engrossing me for many hours. Those three hours flew by.

Thinking about that TV episode-like length, I ask Osaimi if that helps with storytelling. "Yeah – pacing, and finding that line between gameplay and when do we want to introduce a story beat. There is the main [story]line to understand what's going on, to evolve with Arjun as a character as his layers unravel," he says. "Then, right back to the high-octane action."

Arjun's power progression, alongside his bullet-absorbing shield, feels like a major differentiator between it and Returnal. "It's this constant design space we're trying to explore – how do we keep the edge of the difficulty while also allowing more people to enjoy the game?" says Tinari. "For me, the most important feeling is when you're facing an enemy you've died to several times. You know it's coming. You arrive, you die a couple times. Then, eventually, you overcome it. That feeling – [Oscar,] I think you mentioned your hands were shaking. That's the feeling we're going for, and how do we bring that to more people? The Armor Matrix is one aspect of that"

Right where you also access the World Dial to teleport to the start of each level, Soltari AI overseer, Primary, can also upgrade your armor's power to access new abilities. The currency for Armor Matrix skilltree unlocks are found throughout runs in caches, or from defeated enemies, and retained when you die and return to The Passage. Though, beating each boss is eventually required to clear a node on the skilltree, meaning there's a limit to the boosts you can get for each chunk of the game.

Armor up

"The game doesn't solve itself for you – you still have to dodge, you still have to absorb, you still have to shoot with a good timing – but it just gives you a little bit of a step up each time," says Tinari of the Armor Matrix's role. "In the early part of the tree, you unlock the ability to get power from corrupted bullets. So when you first play in the Eclipse, you're getting this corruption, and it feels like you're way at a disadvantage. When you unlock the node that gives you power from corrupted bullets, you're still in danger [...] But now you just have that way of punching back with the power weapon."

Arjun gaining the power to use the corruption that would otherwise kill him, at the risk of it temporarily draining his max armor, is almost as much of a character story beat as it is an upgrade – Saros may be "gameplay first" as Housemarque describe it, but both play and narrative are very much in sync.

Ensuring Arjun's progression of power can still create that feeling of tension, however, has been a balancing act. "[It's not] invalidating the difficulty, but giving people ways to overcome the challenge," says Tinari. "The other aspect of that was briefly shown in one of the gameplay trailers – the Carcosan modifiers, our approach to: how do we let players control difficulty without saying 'I just can't handle it, I'm going to stop', or 'I'm going to make it easy mode.' It's more about, 'Where do I want that difficulty to be? What are my strengths as a player?'"

At the end of my hands-on with Saros I got to play around with these modifiers a little bit to replay a couple of levels. Also accessed alongside the Armor Matrix and the World Dial, these toggles present a range of buffs and debuffs that apply to the world for your run, balanced as a semi-circular dial. Each selected buff pulls it towards the left, and debuffs tilt it to the right. You might choose a wider radius for sucking up those all-important upgrade resources at the cost of enemies dealing more damage – and more modifiers seem to be unlocked as you progress.

"It's always fun to try and challenge conventions of a genre. With Returnal, it was very much this roguelike structure, but you had third-person shooting [that] was this new challenge, new frontier for it. We have this basis now, so we're asking ourselves: what aspects of the roguelike do we like, and what do we want to augment?" says Tinari. "One thing for us was to keep the feeling of danger when you're on a long run, where you don't want to lose your progress; but also reduce the feeling of helplessness when you know there's a potential like three hours to get back to where I was, right?" Returnal's sense of danger was great, but I have to admit it could be disheartening to lose due to some rotten luck deep into a run.

"There's no objectively right answer, but we tried to strike this balance [in Saros]. For example, you have teleportation unlocked after you get to the second biome, so you have this option," says Tinari. "Do I want to do the whole run from the first biome into the second to reach the second boss, and have all the artifacts and weapons that I've gained along the way, which will give me kind of a head start against the boss? Or, do I want to save time? Maybe I want to practice the fight, learn the enemies, learn the boss's patterns."

Giving players that freedom when it comes to Saros' structure and progression "helps with pacing", says Osaimi. "But I think it also [...] promotes the replayability aspect as well. With shorter runs, being able to go back and experience those in a shorter time frame adds a lot." I agree – even when Saros meets me with failure, it's much easier to dust Arjun off to get back into the fight once again, to dive into Carcosa for just one more run, to scoop up enough resources for more unlock, or simply to run head long into danger for one more shot – or, of course, the hot pursuit of revenge.

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Saros sees Soltari Enforcer, Arjun Devraj, fighting through alien planet Carcosa to find out what happened to a lost colony, but its deadly wildlife isn't the only thing that puts him through his paces. The world itself is dangerous. Arjun's expeditions put him out of sync with how time flows for his crewmates at operating base, The Passage. Each roguelike-style run also sees the planet's environments twist into new layouts. The planet's frequent, strange Eclipses, too, increase Arjun's ability to power-up, all while also adding greater risk to each expedition.

The result is that Carcosa as a planet feels not only dangerous, but that it's tempting Arjun with the power to rise up to meet it. Compared to Returnal, which was equally challenging, during my hands-on with Saros I find myself encouraged to play riskier, to get more aggressive, to be less cautious (recovery is less punishing as well, thanks to some permanent progression options, and the ability to teleport directly to each new level). For instance, Arjun's shield can absorb enemy bullets to shoot the overcharge back as a power shot. During an Eclipse, these shots can be corrupted, still giving him that power at the cost temporarily depleting his max armor.

Forever's gonna start tonight

Encouraging an aggressive playstyle comes through in the storytelling as well. "I think Arjun as a character has a sense of more aggression, being a Soltari Enforcer," says Khalil Osaimi, senior narrative designer, cinematics. "He's no nonsense. Run at the bullets. It enforces the use of the shield and absorbing this power, and what that does to him coming back stronger after every run as well. We try to complement narrative and gameplay as much as possible."

Housemarque describes Saros, and all of its portfolio, as "gameplay first", but that doesn't mean a well-told story isn't there – just that it's up to you how much you want to explore it. The mysteries of Carcosa go beyond what you're told in cutscenes, woven into environment design whether that's ancient murals you can look over, or simply the construction of a space.

Across the two levels of Saros I play, there always comes a different point at which Arjun has no choice but to activate the Eclipse to progress. It reminds me of how in Returnal some of the environments felt paired with one another – such as a desert that becomes frozen over. Here, these flip sides are within one single run, the Eclipse transforming an area as you're becoming used to it. The Ancient Depths, for instance, is an abandoned factory that becomes reactivated with the Eclipse's energy, the mechanical enemies whirring to life; cutting lasers and spinning gears becoming new hazards for Arjun to navigate.

"From a narrative perspective, I consider the Eclipse one of the most interesting characters of the game, because no matter if you're on the surface or if you're underground, that haunting presence is always looming," says Osaimi. "It's not just to open up paths. It's not just to change the visual direction. It's the gameplay aspect of the corruption bullets [as well]. But, what is that corruption also doing to our character and the characters in the game?"

"With this kind of stuff, we try and make sure it has both a gameplay purpose and a narrative purpose," says lead game designer Abebe Tinari when I ask how the Eclipse mechanic came to be. "Our challenge as the enemy designers was, OK, it's the Eclipse now, how do enemies change? For a long time, we were prototyping various ways of making enemies more difficult. You know, [increasing] health, more damage. But, it didn't really feel immediately like an escalation, which is what it had to be. The answer that we came to was the corrupted bullets. When you start the Eclipse, they're shooting different bullets – that was the most immediately recognizable change we came to."

In fact, the ability to absorb corrupted enemy bullets is actually an upgrade you buy back at homebase, The Passage, part of Saros' new permanent progression system. Unlocked via the Armor Matrix powered by sassy, hyper-corporate machine Primary, who posits itself as a manifestation of the Soltari company's will, this is more than a simple skilltree but a part of Saros' worldbuilding just like Carcosa's Eclipses.

It's all in aid of "crafting a haunting narrative", Osaimi tells me. "Take Returnal, for example. You're Selene, and you're in isolation. Here, Arjun, how he reacts to the things that are happening with him – whether it's through the world of Carcosa, the enemies, the Eclipse itself – how does that affect him as a character? What is the perspective of the rest of the characters that he's around as well? [...] The concept of corruption definitely affects the character."

After all, it might be a neat upgrade that Arjun can use the power of corruption for himself, but then also, erm, is it really OK to constantly be steering him into the path of this deadly power? Aesthetic changes, like a gradually growing goopy appendage help to highlight how full of corruption Arjun is at any one time before he blasts it back out with a power shot.

"There's a lot of subtle things in there too. I'm not sure if you noticed when you get artifacts, you get [more] Resilience, Command, [or Drive], right?" says Tinari. "We call them growth attributes that tie into your weapon stats. It's, of course, a gameplay rich system, but the names of those attributes are not arbitrary. We tried to kind of tie that into Arjun's character, how he develops."

Saros might be aiming to be gameplay first, but that doesn't mean that the story or worldbuilding aren't there, or even that they're sidelined. It's there all the time, through how you play as Arjun, or even the way his stats are expressed. The real question is really: how much will you notice? In a way, that's a storytelling mechanic in and of itself.

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Saros isn't Returnal 2, but this roguelike follow-up still takes the foundations introduced there as its primary point of inspiration. On the surface, the shared DNA is obvious, but just a few subtle changes mean that the deeper you get into Saros, the more different you realize it is – to the point where my hands-on with Saros didn't click until the game's first boss, Prophet, shook me hard enough to stop trying to play it like Returnal.

"It is a skill check, yeah," grins lead game designer Abebe Tinari when I relate that my hands were shaking by the time I eventually beat it. "We tried to really tailor that early experience, but not in the way of adding more text tutorials or making people read a bunch of long explanations. It was more – how can people organically discover these mechanics?" says Tinari. "With the very first mech enemy, here's this long line of bullets. What do you do with it? Well, you have to dodge it. Or, you could pop your shield and run into it."

Shot through the heart

Tinari is, of course, right – I began my demo instinctively dodging to the side of these long lines of orbal bullets, but noticing they would linger in the air, I switched to running through them with my shield like I'm munching Pac-Man pellets, using the energy boost to charge my power shot. This high-impact super weapon is one you're encouraged to keep using when your shield is overcharged, momentum in play seeing me topping it off constantly in firefights for a ready supply.

"You have this flying enemy that has this nice curving arc of homing bullets, right? So, in Returnal, you have to dash," says Tinari. These shots, like Dio's daggers from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, hover briefly in the air before hitting at high-speed, requiring solid timing to get out of the way in both Saros and Returnal. But, the shield option in Saros turns the bullet pattern on its head, from highly deadly to highly useful. "Those come right to you, and turn into power," he says. "We tried to space out those beats so that before you get to the first boss, you're introduced to all the tools you need to defeat it. Hopefully!"

As well as getting me used to using my shield to absorb bullets, Saros' first area also introduces me to the planet Carcosa's strange eclipses. Activated partway through a level, this changes the biome visually, the way enemies act, the risk-reward factors of loot, and adds corrupted enemy bullets to the mix. Yellow rather than the standard blue, Arjun learns how to absorb these early on, but the stored energy temporarily reduces his maximum armor until you blast out the power shots.

"You can't actually die from corruption. There is a limit, I think it's about 90% of your integrity. that it won't go beyond," says Tinari. When battling the first boss, I end up on the very edge of death as I exchange fire with it, using my shield as much as possible. "It puts you in the red health state, where one more hit will take you out, right? So if you're willing to kind of take those bullets, you get the power, but then it gets more and more dangerous," he says.

Saros encourages an aggressive playstyle that rewards taking risks. While that's not totally absent in Returnal, it did feel like the best option was often to stay as far away from enemy bullets as possible. Saros, on the other hand, deliberately complicates this dynamic, and it's not just about the shield removing damage, but how far you want to go in using it to strike back. Battles might look similar at a glance, but it completely changes how you approach firefights in Saros compared to Returnal.

"The biggest one was to account for the shield," says Tinari. "Just for some context, I arrived here a year and a half ago, so I've been working on the enemies since then, and we made pretty much every bullet pattern you see within the last year and a half. It was a really fun process. But it was difficult. The shield on paper, it's like one thing – OK, they have the dash, they have the jump, now they have the shield. One more thing, right? That one thing changes everything. Because you have this option of just standing still and popping the shield, and all the bullets, if they're homing bullets, they all come to you. It completely changed how we make patterns."

The addition of the shield simply gives you so many more options for Arjun to tackle foes. "There's an enemy in the second biome, this giant mech, it either opens sideways and fires a tunnel of bullets, or it has a little cannon that pops up from the top and fires a big, fast moving burst of bullets," says Tinari. "With the top one, you're encouraged to dash quickly to avoid it. With the tunnel, what we wanted to do is kind of challenge you to shield the edge of it, to get the power from it. But it has one – we call it a nova bullet – a red bullet in the center that will break your shield. That, in Returnal, would not make sense, because you have no reason to challenge yourself to get inside the tunnel. You would just dash away from it, right? But, because we now have these mechanics, we can layer these different bullet types in ways that tempt you to do those tricky things."

Likewise, second boss Bastion allows me to approach it like I might a firefight in Returnal, thanks to its wider arena, but constantly presents intriguing ways to use my shield to get the upperhand.

"There's one attack that – I totally see what you're saying about how it's more about dashing and jumping, like Returnal – but there's one attack I really am proud of, which is a big laser attack," says Tinari. "It's a laser with a spiral of bullets around the outside. The idea there is that you can just run away from it. You're fast enough to outrun it. But if you walk slowly on purpose while your shield is active, you can just absorb all the bullets off the side without the beam touching you, and then get this massive charge of power all at once."

I compare the approach, daring Arjun to get close to enemy fire without getting hurt, as being like Crazy Taxi. "I was playing it two weeks ago!" says Tinari (the Dreamcast is his favorite console, which is correct). Drive close to oncoming traffic in that Sega classic, and the Crazy Through gives you a speed boost. "Classic, like, Burnout-style," Tinari adds. "A near miss!"

The approach gives Saros an extra dimension of creativity and player expression. Even though you could stay on the move as far away from enemy fire as possible, it's clear that's sub-optimal. How far do you want to go in order to play Saros better? To finesse it?

"One of the coolest action mechanics is [what] I think of as analog interactions. So, a binary interaction is like: you jump or you don't. But analog is more like, how much do you feather the stick?" says Tinari. "Going back to Bastion's beam – do you dash away from it? It might be challenging in a timing sense, but it's just one decision you make. This act of regulating how much your thumb is moving on the stick to kind of just get the right distance, that's the real depth."

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My hands are shaking, eyes wide as I try to pirouette through a barrage of swirling multi-colored bullets from a hulking, rooty tree thing called Prophet. About 30 minutes into one of my early runs in Saros, the spiritual successor to Returnal – a roguelike shooter Housemarque calls "bullet ballet" – this boss is putting me through the wringer, whipping at my pointed toes as I desperately try to survive through a surprise second phase with dwindling health. This ain't no Swan Lake. I dodge, I weave, I ease the DualSense triggers to use alt-fire blasts when I have space. Finally, it falls. Then… it gets back up. Come on, a third phase?

As someone who felt like they mastered Returnal's third-person shooting well enough to consistently bash through runs, in this moment Saros begins to feel like a gargantuan challenge. Sweating it up in Housemarque's Helsinki office, a fizzy orange drink the only way to calm my nerves, I'm getting nervous. Let loose on the first three hours of the game from the very start, I'm told I have two whole levels to play through. What if this is where it ends for me? What if I can't get past the first level? Saros is a wonderful spiritual sequel to Returnal, but it's a different, evolved beast at the same time – with well-judged difficulty providing an excellent challenge that's satisfying to overcome. Forget being a PS5 must-play, Saros is feeling like game of the year material already.

Bullet sponge

Funnelling me into a small corridor, walls of roots restricting movement, it feels like Prophet is issuing me a direct challenge: stop trying to play Saros like Returnal. So I do. With dodging in such a small space feeling like a death sentence, I instead have the tenacious Soltari enforcer Arjun Devraj (Rahul Kohli) square up to the lightshow-like display of bullets, readying his shield to meet the threats of alien planet Carcosa head-on.

Using this piece of megacorp tech from back home depletes the energy levels of Arjun's armor. But, absorbing compatible bullets restores even more of that energy, able to be overcharged and blasted out to deal devastating damage. Blue bullets do this unhindered, but yellow bullets – corrupted by the Carcosa's frequent, strange Eclipses – spread that corruption through Arjun's suit, reducing his armor capacity until I cleanse it with each power blast.

During the climax of my duel against Prophet, my health already dwindling, playing it safe – as I might have done in Returnal – isn't going to cut it. Fully embracing the utility of Arjun's shield, I accept that from this point on, health doesn't really matter. Constantly swarming me with corrupted, yellow bullets as well as the safer blue ones, I push through them all with no distinction.

Hold, release, blast. Hold, release, blast. Mistiming getting that shield up will see Arjun obliterated: too late, and the final 10% dregs of his armor will be shredded, but too early and I won't have enough shield energy recharged to even begin sucking them in. By the end I'm not dodging at all, deliberately making myself a target to ensure as many bullets pepper into me as possible. With this long, narrow arena, it becomes a tennis match, a volley of bullets that I keep throwing back into Prophet's face – a proper duel.

When Prophet crumbles, I'm exhausted. Even though it's one of the best PS5 games, Returnal's runs could take well over an hour, seeing how far into each sequence of levels you could get, unsure how far you'd make it. In Saros, I'm relieved to see that after this first boss I activate a teleportation shortcut back to Arjun's base of operations – The Passage – which I can use to return to tackle the next level immediately, or start from square one to hoover up upgrades through levels and bosses back-to-back if I so wish.

Housemarque tells me that aiming for these chunks of play to average about 30-minutes in length is deliberate, and it feels like a smart move, giving me much needed time to breathe and let that stress out. Clashes in Saros, rewarding you for risky manoeuvring close to enemy fire, can feel so much more intense than Returnal where staying on the move was often the catch-all strategy.

Safe Passage

Soltari, the megacorp that sent Arjun and his crew off to shipwreck on Carcosa, are eager to get their hands on the planet's enigmatic, eclipse-fueled natural resources – though the preceding expeditions have seen each colonization attempt go mysteriously missing. Arjun's unit is specifically geared up to find out why – and for some that mission is much more personal than the clinical profit margins Solatari are chasing. That tension is already a highlight, and best observed through Primary, an almost snake-like, mechanized artificial intelligence unit that can improve Arjun's gear. Teleport back to base camp for the first time and it'll briefly be confused before scanning you, declaring the technology now property of Soltari, and notifying Arjun he'll have a bonus in his payslip while our main man just rolls his eyes. It's charmingly HAL-ish.

Primary's upgrades aren't all talk, either. Besides Arjun's shield, permanent upgrades through the Armor Matrix are the biggest way Saros diverges from Returnal. Scooping up resources from destroyed enemies or caches, they can be traded in to progress up a big skill tree, primarily giving Arjun stronger starting stats or for gear rolls to have a higher base level. In my demo, some nodes on this tree are locked behind defeating certain bosses, so there's a cap on how many upgrades Arjun can accrue that's tied to progression, but there's plenty up for grabs if you want to focus on getting stronger to get a leg-up in those boss fights.

Similarly, Carcosan Modifiers allow for further, world-altering tweaks, and are also set at Primary before an excursion. Split between positive and negative modifiers that you aim to balance, you may trigger, for instance, a wider collection radius on resource drops, but then need to counteract by setting enemies to do more damage. Not simply a difficulty mode, it allows you to explore adding your own layer of risk-reward.

Saros' roguelike structure means there will be plenty of time to experiment as you fight through each of Carcosa's environments, even if teleportation means you can now start directly at each newly unlocked area if you wish. Between deaths, the planet reforms and shapeshifts so that Arjun will have to battle through a freshly formed sequence of rooms. It's a similar approach to Returnal, but, like with the more focused runtimes, feels tightened up.

Each handcrafted chunk of level feels well-designed, especially when it comes to presenting interesting spaces for intense shootouts with foes, mixing together different elevations with spaces for Arjun to run rings around enemies or deftly dodge their huge bullet barrages in close confines. Compared to Returnal, I find myself getting stuck on bits of level geometry far less across the first two levels.

Beyond each of Saros' rooms feeling well-designed, so too does the experience of moving between them. Some areas have multiple exits to progress forward, and whether one leads towards the main objective or is a side-route is marked clearly on Arjun's mini-map. These side spaces are always worth exploring if you're able to – some are locked and require collectible keys, or sometimes whole new traversal upgrades you presumably get later.

Unlike Returnal, these side-paths are all slight, quick diversions, but I think this really helps with Saros' fast-paced expeditions. It's so much easier to quickly assess the risk-reward value of going off the beaten track in Saros, while in Returnal I often found the lengthy side-paths not worth the backtracking time by the late-game. While Arjun's base levels are upgraded between each run, he'll still be stripped of power-ups each run, so hoovering up number-juicing upgrades as you plunge once more into Carcosa's depths is vital.

Saros' eclipses even make for a cleaner indication of that risk-reward ramp up, too. Housemaque calls Carcosa's lunar phenomena an "escalation" in just about every sense. Arjun begins exploring each environment as normal, but always comes up against a progression blocker that he'll need to remove by interfacing with strange alien technology that initiates an Eclipse. Under this phenomenon, new life is breathed into this otherwise almost dead-world – ancient forests stir once again, abandoned factories whirr back to life, allowing for new ways to progress with new dangers to match, from tougher beasties to having to move between laser-cutting tools.

Pressure is added just about everywhere during an Eclipse. Beyond just adding corruption to enemy blasts, it seeps into all things – gear too – teasing power at a cost. A huge power surge may now saddle Arjun with a decrease in power if he shoots while stationary (why are you stopping, anyway?), or, much worse, introduce fall damage. I will never look before I leap. Likewise, a hefty new gun may come at the cost of stripping away auto-aim capabilities. Saros is constantly making me think which debuffs I'm willing to handle in order to become vastly more powerful, and weighing up the cost of playing it safe versus feeling underpowered.

I've yet to get a full sense of Saros' broader structure, but getting to run a few loops across two levels (including beating them front-to-back one after another) is enough to convince me this quicker, more intense play is absolutely the evolution of the Returnal formula I wanted to see. Just three hours has been enough time to get me comfortable with when to embrace the Eclipse, which side-paths to poke through, and which gear I want to pocket on each randomized run. But it's also made it clear there's so much more to experience as I find new layers of depth.

Arjun's starting pistol is a punchy, shotgun-like handgun I don't think much of at first, but when I grow comfortable with its half-trigger pull alt-fire – which removes its fire-rate limit completely to simply shoot as fast as you can mash the trigger – I begin to love it. Only at the end of my time with this early look at Saros do I even begin to really click with all the nuances of the Soltari shield. My first victory against Prophet was dicey, empowering, and edge-of-my-seat, but on repeat encounters with the boss I begin to grow more comfortable with scooping up corrupted shots only when I have to, easing my way through to the less dangerous blue ones.

Meeting that danger head-on, and growing comfortable with it, is all part of Arjun's journey. The second boss I face plays with this, blasting out waves of bullets that mix blue and yellow shots together, teasing me with potential non-corrupted paths to weave through for optimal damage. Then, there's a laser blasting out unblockable damage in its center, but surrounded by absorbable bullets. Play it safe, and just run? Or ride the very edge of the danger zone to blast all that energy right back out? It's possible to play cautiously in Saros, but the allure of embodying Arjun fully, and learning how to blast right through, is hard to resist.

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Earlier this week, reports emerged that Sony was shutting down Dark Outlaw Games, a first-party studio led by Call of Duty: Black Ops veteran Jason Blundell. Today, Blundell confirmed the news on a Twitch stream hosted by another member of the Dark Outlaw Games team, JCbackfire.

"We have to respect confidentiality so we can’t go into every gory detail," Blundell said during the stream, as highlighted by Kotaku. Neither dev revealed much about the project, but JCbackfire did confirm that it was not a live service game.

Despite promises for extensive live service games, Sony seems to have been backing away from those ambitions in recent years. A multiplayer The Last of Us title went on ice in 2023, Concord had its disastrous launch in 2024, and live-service titles from Bluepoint and Bend Studio were reportedly canceled in 2025.

It's unclear what PlayStation, a brand that had cemented a reputation for fantastic single-player narrative games before its live service pivot, is building its portfolio around now. But one thing is clear: Dark Outlaw Games will not be a part of the lineup.

"I can reassure you – and it’s been reassured to me – it’s just times change, focus changes, but the project we were doing and what we were doing, fans would have been very excited," Blundell said. Either way, both Blundell and JCbackfire agree that getting the news "fucking sucked."

Before Dark Outlaw, Blundell had previously founded Deviation Games, which, while not a first-party studio, was building a game in partnership with PlayStation. He left that studio in 2022, and it was eventually shut down before the game could be released.

"The question will be, 'Oh, that's two down. Maybe it's time for you to retire?'" Blundell mused with a bit of gallows humor during the stream. "You would have to put me in the goddamn ground. And by the way, I'll do the next one, and when that fails, guess what I'll do after that? The next one. And you know what I'll do after that? The next one. And then once they bury me, I'll still be trying to effing do the next one."

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney says latest layoffs will result in "a stream of resumes of once-in-a-lifetime quality folks" because the downsizing "wasn't a performance-based 'rightsizing.'"

Just as God of War fans suspected, developer Sony Santa Monica considered taking its 2018 reboot series to Egypt before ultimately deciding to center it around Norse mythology, original God of War programmer Tim Moss confirms.

Fans found what appeared to be evidence of Sony Santa Monica's flirtation with the great gods of the Nile earlier this year, while spelunking in the 2022 God of War Ragnarok files. Unused scenes reveal a companion for Atreus who can only repeat its own name, "Mau," which is also the ancient Egyptian word for cat, or a manifestation of the sun god Ra. It's compelling evidence for the rumored direction of the God of War franchise, but Moss' memories recounted to Retro Gamer help make it a little more convincing.

He recalls, while working on the 2018 reboot as development support, "The main myths we looked at were the obvious ones: Egyptian and Norse." Ultimately, Sony Santa Monica chose to explore Norse mythology after determining "it was familiar but not familiar."

Moss continues, "I think the plan was to do Egyptian [mythology] at some point." It's never too late for "some point" to arrive…

But Moss doesn't seem as concerned with the future of the God of War franchise as he is just glad to have been involved with its creation. Speaking about God of War 3, the 2010 game on which he served as director of technology, Moss says, "I'm proud I got to make something that will probably outlive me."

God of War actor Christopher Judge says he hopes a potential sequel will take place in Egypt, but "I have no doubt that no matter what pantheon it is, it will be great."

PlayStation has reportedly closed Dark Outlaw Games, a first-party studio led by Call of Duty: Black Ops veteran Jason Blundell. The studio had been working on a new, AAA IP since 2025. The closure is said to be part of wider layoffs at the company, some of which also affect mobile development.

"PlayStation is closing Dark Outlaw Games, a studio formed last year by former Call of Duty lead Jason Blundell," according to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, posting on Bluesky. Schreier adds, "PlayStation is also making other cuts including in mobile development. Around 50 people laid off."

Schreier's post follows an apparent leak on the forum ResetEra, which made similar claims, and added that PlayStation is scaling back on mobile development outside of "a few select high impact projects."

Little is known about Dark Outlaw's game, other than the fact that it would have been a "AAA console title," according to a job listing. That listing for a senior concept artist created some controversy when it surfaced, since it called for someone with "advanced expertise in using generative AI tools such as Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, ChatGPT, or similar platforms" to help conceptualize the game.

Blundell is best known as one of the leads behind the Zombies modes for Black Ops. He worked at Treyarch for over a decade before leaving in 2020 to found Deviation Games, which was set to make a new title in partnership with PlayStation. Blundell left Deviation in 2022, and the developer was eventually shut down in 2024 – a few months after he'd founded Dark Outlaw Games as a first-party PlayStation studio.

The report comes just over a month after Sony shut down remake and remaster maestro Bluepoint. A few years ago, the company announced extensive plans for new live service games, but killed Bluepoint's live service God of War title in 2025.

Epic Games lays off "over 1,000" people, CEO Tim Sweeney says "I'm sorry we're here again" and blames "the downturn in Fortnite engagement."

God of War and its sequel are some of the best PS2 games ever made, but Sony's Santa Monica Studio didn't really know what it was getting into when development on the epic mythological action game got underway. The studio's story was similar to many in the era: a lot of missed deadlines and intense overtime.

"We started God Of War in 2001, but we didn't start with the idea that it would ultimately take four years," lead coder Tim Moss explains in the latest issue of Retro Gamer magazine. "We crunched like motherfuckers. We were young and enthusiastic, and we didn't know any better, so we worked hard and kept moving the deadline. That was the way it got done."

Prior to God of War, Santa Monica Studio developed the moderately horny racing game Kinetica, and its engine both of Kratos' PS2 games – so technically, the development lineage stretches back even further than those four years. That might sound like nothing today, when games like The Elder Scrolls 6 are stretching fandom patience to the breaking point, but it was pretty unusual for a game in the PS2 era to take that long to make.

Progress on the sequel was quite a bit faster, Moss says, but it doesn't sound like it was anything smoother. "We made God Of War II in two years, but really most of the game was finished in the nine months up to its completion," Moss says. "We were very time pressured. I mean the crunch was even worse than the first one."

Moss singles out God of War 2's Pegasus sequence – where you ride atop the back of the mythical winged beast and do battle with enemies in mid-air – as a particular challenge. "Pegasus was one of the new things that we did," Moss explains. "Pegasus was difficult because it was completely different than everything else. Really it was asking for something that was slightly outside the capabilities of the engine that we had."

Studios and developers alike have thankfully pushed to reduce crunch in recent years, but as working conditions improve AAA games have simultaneously been increasing their scope to unprecedented levels. It's now been four years since the launch of God of War Ragnarok, and we have nothing more than rumors about what the next entry in the series will be. Some elements of the PS2 era – crunch included – are best left behind, but there's gotta be a happy medium in there somewhere.

Final Fantasy 14 boss man Yoshi-P says younger players "haven't really had the chance to connect" with the JRPG series as "the release intervals for new titles have gotten longer."

We got a preview of PSSR 2 with the launch of Resident Evil Requiem a few weeks ago, but today marks the wider launch of the improved upscaling tech on PS5 Pro. The upgrade lands as part of a system-level update that can apply to all games, but some specific titles – including the likes of Silent Hill 2, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and Monster Hunter Wilds – are getting their own special patches, and arguably the tech's most notable test will be the launch of Crimson Desert later this week.

"PSSR is an AI library that analyzes each frame pixel by pixel as it upscales game visuals," as Sony explains in its announcement. "With this latest evolution, image reconstruction is more precise, motion stability is improved, and developers have greater flexibility to balance performance and fidelity on PS5 Pro."

The original version of PSSR often did provide major visual upgrades for certain titles on PS5 Pro, but the machine learning-based upscaler sometimes introduced distracting graphical artifacts in certain games. PSSR 2 – simply the "new" or "improved" PSSR, as Sony prefers to call it – builds on an upgraded algorithm that should both eliminate those sorts of artifacts and offer better results across the board.

A new Digital Foundry analysis breaks down some of the big improvements to existing games. Silent Hill f, for example, no longer has the shimmering, pulsing visual noise it once displayed on PS5 Pro. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth offered one of the better PSSR 1 implementations out there, but it's also been improved, cutting out the soft film grain-like effect that once overlaid the screen.

It's not all perfect, as DF highlights that Dragon Age: The Veilguard sometimes showcases odd, dot-shaped artifacts with PSSR 2 on certain textures. But all the games tested are definitively better under the new tech. "This is a big improvement over PSSR 1," Digital Foundry's Oliver Mackenzie believes. "So big that it justifies the existence of PS5 Pro almost on its own."

Silent Hill f, Silent Hill 2, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Control, Alan Wake 2, Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Nioh 3, Rise of the Ronin, Monster Hunter Wilds, and Dragon's Dogma 2 have all been specifically upgraded for PSSR 2. The new PS5 Pro update, which launches today, also introduces a system-level setting to enable or disable the feature across all games on the console, though we don't yet know what sort of improvements – or flaws – may be introduced with this more general setting.

"Moving forward, most new PS5 Pro titles will launch with support for this enhanced PSSR, ensuring players continue to see improvements in image quality and performance," Sony explains in its announcement.

One of the key upcoming PS5 games with PSSR 2 support is Crimson Desert. The long-awaited open-world RPG looks so visually impressive that console players had begun to grow skeptical of how it would run at launch, but the devs finally released some PS5 Pro footage last week that looked darned impressive – and that was without the new PSSR. In theory, it should be even better with PSSR 2.

Sony has also confirmed two other notable PSSR 2 patches arriving "in the coming weeks": Assassin's Creed Shadows and Cyberpunk 2077. PS5 Pro's impact was greatly diminished by a number of games – I'm looking at you, Silent Hill 2 – that straight-up looked worse than they did on the base console thanks to poor PSSR implementations. While I wish things had been different at launch, I'm glad Sony is finally making efforts to set things right.

These are the best PS5 games you can play in 2026.

The original God of War trilogy is both a great set of video games and a perfect example of the M-rated excess the industry often aspired to in the post-GTA 3 glow of the '00s. The sex minigames alone are pretty grotesque reminders of the series' devotion to male power fantasies, so they'll surely be cut from the upcoming trilogy remake, right? Not so fast with those assumptions, says one former Sony Santa Monica writer – those sex scenes were, after all, largely designed by women.

"Fun fact: the God of War sex mini-games were designed by women," according to Alanah Pearce, who was a writer at Sony Santa Monica for several years, speaking in a recent stream. "In fact, I worked with one of them. They were largely worked on by women on that dev team. In fact, when you walk into, I think it's Aphrodite's chamber, this was designed – again, including a group of women – to look like a labia. It's literally designed to be evocative of a vagina. And the women were the ones who did that. When you look at it, it makes sense, but I feel like a lot of people didn't notice that. I worked with one of the women who worked on these, and she was very proud of it, and it was really fucking cool."

Pearce later identifies the woman she worked with as Ariel Lawrence, who served in production roles across the original God of War trilogy and Ascension. There's a bit of making of footage (I'll give you an obvious NSFW warning here) showcasing the motion capture process for the Aphrodite sex minigame, which takes place in God of War 3, and Lawrence speaks quite unashamedly of it there.

In that scene, you, as Kratos, walk into Aphrodite's chambers, where she's making a vaguely depicted form of love with two handmaidens – all three women are, naturally, topless – on top of a bed with very yonic curtains. She sends the handmaidens away as she propositions you. If you accept, the camera swings over to the two still-topless handmaidens, as you press buttons and swing the analog stick around while the women react to Kratos' stunning demonstration of male virility. At the end, the handmaidens are so overcome by lust at watching this display that they leap on each other with the enthusiasm of horny teenagers.

"I recognize that in God of War, like, it's a little silly the way it was in those games," Pearce admits. "But again, I think it should still be in those remakes. I think it belongs there. I don't think it was disrespectful to women. I think that, if anything, those games are quite critical of who Kratos is as a person. The rage is clearly not fulfilling to him. It almost serves the journey that he ends up going on in 2018 and Ragnarok better if you have that version of him to begin with. I don't think it should be changed personally. I definitely think they should be there."

It's worth noting that the sex scene with Aphrodite is immediately preceded by a sequence where Kratos 'rescues' a half-nude female prisoner, angrily shoves her around for a bit, and ends up wedging her into the gear works of a massive door so that he can calmly stride through. Is that a depiction of a man holding a tragic amount of rage in his heart? Sure, but the woman is also presented in a titillating enough way that the line between "story about a misogynistic act" and "pure misogynistic fantasy" gets pretty blurry.

Either way, the sex scenes in the first two God of War games are substantially tamer, and probably less of a concern for whoever has to make a decision about whether to include them in the trilogy remake. The real question is what form that remake will take. We don't yet know whether it'll be an all-new game telling the same story as we see in the first three God of War titles, or a simpler visual upgrade that keeps the original gameplay and pacing intact. Personally? I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the remake continues to show a few nipples besides those belonging to Kratos.

God of War ranks pretty highly on our list of the best PS2 games.

After almost five years and a few ups and downs, Bungie's Marathon is now publicly available. As people check out the FPS, fans of Arc Raiders are trying to quell tribalism within their community in the name of simply enjoying more variety on the market.

Marathon and Arc Raiders invite some comparison, with both being sci-fi extraction shooters. They offer a blend of PvP and PvE, have distinct structures for their progression, and use futuristic settings for their backdrops, albeit to very different ends.

You could easily imagine players being entrenched in one or the other, like Battlefield and Call of Duty, but the fanbase of Embark's release is being less combative.

"Two beautiful games can coexist without all this hate for each other," a Redditor says. "If I want an experience more focused on PvE and finding people to socialize with, I will go to Arc, (but I have to admit I preferred the PvE missions in Marathon than in Arc). If I want a fast game with adrenaline-filled PvP, I will go to Marathon."

They include a meme of someone enjoying Arc Raiders and Marathon as if they're both delicious desserts. "Holy shit! Two cakes!" they're exclaiming. The comments are filled with people agreeing.

"If Marathon does well, Embark cannot grow too complacent with Arc Raiders," replies one commenter. "We want this competition, it's good for both us and Marathon players at the end of the day."

People don't even necessarily agree that they're similar experiences. "Embark are putting the focus on PvE and the 'don't shoot' mentality. Marathon is the complete opposite; the devs encourage PvP heavily," as another Redditor adds.

For those who've dedicated themselves to Arc Raiders, Marathon provides a welcome reprieve without losing the social aspects. "After 300h [in] Arc Raiders, Marathon is a nice new game," one commenter states.

Whether you enjoy a game or not, success should always be the hope, especially in the current industry where games and teams can be shut down in the blink of an eye. If you had a problem with Arc Raiders, Marathon might be more your speed, and vice versa, and variety is truly the spice of life.

Arc Raiders was recording private Discord DMs in plain text, engineer claims in report on "serious privacy and security violations," which prompted a hasty hotfix from Embark

What began as a, perhaps mischievous, but otherwise innocent fan challenge for Helldivers 2 developers to play their own game on the highest difficulty in exchange for a $1,000 charity donation has turned into a quagmire. Both developer Arrowhead and publisher Sony are putting on their wading shoes in an effort to rid it of weeds.

Arrowhead and Sony both addressed all players in a joint statement posted on official Helldivers 2 social channels March 5, making it clear that "Arrowhead Game Studios and Sony Interactive Entertainment are tracking the situation currently unfolding surrounding the Dev D10 challenge which started on Reddit."

The initial post issuing the challenge, made about a week ago, establishes "A SERIOUS OFFER" to donate $1,000 to Arrowhead's preferred charity in exchange for "a video of 4 of their developers playing an entire operation on Oshaune on difficulty 10." Another player took it upon themselves to assign specific loadouts to Arrowhead staff, too, including CEO Shams Jorjani, for an additional $1,000 – and Jorjani has recently been flirting with the idea of accepting the expensive wagers.

But other Helldivers 2 players have been informing Jorjani that, within the playerbase, people are torn on the so-called dev D10 challenge. Some people have even decided to retaliate against the original challenge issuer with apparent death threats and phone calls to his employer, as one fan even tells Jorjani in a March 3 Discord message, "The guy who issued the challenge to you guys got doxed today is a sad day."

Jorjani replied at the time, "Yeah. Helldivers treat other helldivers with respect."

Today, Arrowhead and Sony echo this sentiment in their joint warning, stressing that "humans are not the enemy, Helldivers, your fight is elsewhere."

"We do not tolerate threats of violence, harassment, or doxxing toward anyone: players, creators, developers, moderators, or our teams in any community spaces," the studios say. "While we understand that /r/Helldivers is a community-owned and operated channel, it should be a safe and welcoming place for all people to voice their opinions and frustrations in a productive and respectful way. This kind of toxic behavior is unacceptable and not something we will ever condone."

"We are continuing to monitor and review this situation internally and with our external partners," Arrowhead and Sony continue, "but in the meantime we are asking that our players practice kindness and respect towards one another."

Through a top comment with nearly 3,000 upvotes as of writing, reacting to the statement on Reddit, players seem to rally behind the hope that "those involved in the harassment can be tracked down and banned from the game permanently."

Helldivers 2 retires gratuitous 154GB Steam build this month in favor of "slim" PC version after Arrowhead confirms players are still "having a great experience" on "smaller build."