Sony Interactive Entertainment’s PlayStation State of Play aired today, kicking off a half-month of industry events aimed at showing off highly-anticipated games for the year ahead.
SIE’s personal debuts ran a bit on the lighter side—its first-party reveals included a first look at its next-generation PlayStation VR2 headsets and some new PC ports, but Japanese publishers Capcom and Square Enix used the underutilized spotlight to show off new games like a Resident Evil 4 remake and new footage of Final Fantasy XVI.
There were still interesting observations to be made from the slew of PlayStation products. As previously indicated, SIE is pushing onward with PC ports with the reveal of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Remastered, a version of Marvel’s Spider-Man due to launch on Steam later this month.
Then there were the PSVR2 games. SIE showed off the first footage of Horizon VR spinoff Horizon Call of the Mountain, and revealed three third-party VR titles that will be among the platform’s launch titles. These include Resident Evil Village, No Man’s Sky, and The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners — Chapter 2.
The first two games are ports of the previously-released triple-A games, the third is a sequel to Skydance Interactive’s The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners that will also ship on Meta Quest 2.
Sony’s expanded PlayStation Plus subscription service is also getting its first-ever game that will be free on launch day for subscribers: BlueTwelve Studio’s Stray. The highly-anticipated third-person cyberpunk kitty simulator will debut on July 19, 2022.
As we said, this is a fairly light set of reveals. Sony shared no details on the price or release date of the PSVR, and no footage of previously-announced first-party games was shown off. There also weren’t any signs of the new live service games Sony said it would be rolling out later this year.
It was Capcom who showed off the most big new titles, with trailers for Resident Evil 4 remake and Street Fighter 6, both due in 2023. Square Enix rolled more footage of Final Fantasy XVI, and Krafton showed a trailer for the Dead Space spiritual sequel The Callisto Protocol. The latter game was the most prominent game that will release in the 2022 holiday season.
There was also time made for smaller games like Roll7’s Rollerdrome, a PlayStation port of Tunic, and more footage of Scavengers Studios’ Season: A letter to the future.
This might not be the only “light” showcase we see this summer. Game delays from COVID-19, and a more diffuse (but still crowded) media environment may make it more valuable for platform holders to hold onto their most highly anticipated games for later in the year.