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Jun 3, 2022 - Technology

Sony shows off multiple 2023 game releases in PlayStation showcase

Stephen Totilo

Final Fantasy XVI. Screenshot: Square Enix.

Sony showed off some major games during a widely-viewed digital event yesterday, but only one of them will even come close to releasing during the 2022 holiday season.

Why it matters: The latter half of this year is looking unusually fallow for big game releases.

Driving the news: Sony’s half-hour showcase spotlighted four likely blockbusters:

  • Resident Evil 4, a remake of Capcom’s iconic 2005 horror game, slated for PlayStation, Xbox and PC to release on March 24, 2023.
  • Final Fantasy XVI, a new iteration of gaming’s top role-playing game series, announced only for PS5 for a summer 2023 release.
  • Street Fighter 6, a new installment of one of the top fighting game franchises, scheduled for a 2023 PlayStation, Xbox and PC release.
  • The Callisto Protocol, a new sci-fi horror game from PUBG publisher Krafton, on track for PlayStation, Xbox and PC for a Dec. 2, 2022 release.

Smaller games Rollerdrome and Season got August and Fall 2022 dates, respectively.

Between the lines: Sony has a history of using events like this to promote games that are pretty far out.

  • Its June 2018 E3 showcase, for example, highlighted one late 2018 game (Marvel’s Spider-Man), one late 2019 game (Death Stranding) and two games that didn’t arrive until mid-2020 (The Last of Us Part II and Ghost of Tsushima).

The big picture: When a platform-holder like Sony does a showcase, they’re trying to drive attention to their gaming ecosystem.

  • The intended vibe: all of this is available to you if you’re a PlayStation gamer and will hopefully excite you more than what Microsoft is about to show you at its Xbox event.
  • That’s why Sony (or Nintendo or Microsoft) doesn’t bother to mention that many of the third-party games they’re showing will also be released on rival platforms.
  • But a new message is also creeping in: some of this PlayStation awesomeness will come to you, even if you don’t have a PlayStation. Hence an announcement yesterday that PlayStation’s Spider-Man games, once exclusive to PS4/PS5 are coming to PC.

What’s next: When it comes to PlayStation, we still don’t know for sure if expected blockbuster God of War Ragnarok will make its 2022 release window.

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