What’s on Tap for the Blue Team and PlayStation 2017
As another E3 has come and gone with a host of game announcements, the PlayStation faithful surprisingly don’t have much to look forward to in the second half of 2016. No Man’s Sky will finally – hopefully – release to a rabid amount of hype and expectation later this summer, as the long-awaited The Last Guardian and Gran Turismo’s first foray onto PS4, with a different kind of racer in GT Sport, round out the year. Horizon: Zero Dawn, like The Order: 1886 and Uncharted 4 before it, was to be PlayStation’s premier fall title only to be delayed into the new year. But it’s not all bad news as 2017 is full of games exclusive to Sony’s platform as many of their studios debut their first PS4 titles.
PlayStation fans will also get a boost in the number of exclusives this year with the launch of PlayStation VR and all the games that come with it, but 2017’s VR experiences will be off to a flying start with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard playable on virtual reality in January. In October players can expect Guerilla Cambridge’s RIGS, and Eve: Valkyrie as Sony has announced more than 50 titles will be available for their virtual reality platform by the end of the calendar year. One of the bigger ones for PlayStation VR has to be Golem from Highwire Games, a studio comprised of former Bungie developers including the creator of Halo’s famous theme Marty O’Donnell. February is when the bigger exclusives release with both Persona 5 and Guerilla’s Horizon: Zero Dawn launching within a week of one another. Sony might think both games cater to different audiences but that is only to the detriment of those who are going to play both, with two big RPG’s being the worst games you can launch back to back. It also doesn’t help that Ubisoft’s For Honor launches on Valentine’s Day alongside Persona.
Moving deeper into the year things start getting murky as a host of announced titles lack release windows. Media Molecule’s Dreams, Insomniac’s Spider-Man, Quantic Dreams’ Detroit: Become Human, Bend Studios’ Days Gone, and the new God of War are all without dates although some will surely be confirmed during the PlayStation Experience event in December. Colin Moriarty of Kinda Funny reported that after inquiring about Days Gone, Bend Studios mentioned that a 2017 release is by no means secured. Assuming that confirms a fall date at best, it looks as though God of War 4 could be planned for a September release with Detroit: Become Human and Dreams releasing in between February and September.
Insomniac’s Spider-Man wasn’t even given a title so that may indeed be the PlayStation 4’s first big 2018 exclusive. After their Ratchet & Clank remake sold a lot better than Sony expected, it will be interesting to see what the studio does next in terms of PlayStation exclusives titles, as they may opt to develop more Spider-Man games with Marvel’s gaming department recently saying that the webhead’s future is with Sony and Insomniac. Dreams, the successor to LittleBigPlanet, seems to be a game that hardcore PlayStation fans will know and care about so it looks like PlayStation Experience would be the perfect place to announce a release date, although that date could fall anywhere next year and beyond with Media Molecule having a no-show at this year’s E3.
Smaller titles, like Bastion developer’s Pyre and former God of War director David Jaffe’s Drawn to Death, as well as games like The Tomorrow Children from Q-Games, all look set for 2017 launches, although the latter two may sneak into the latter portions of 2016. On the handheld side, there isn’t much. PlayStation Vita players can only look forward to Danganronpa 3 next year and Final Fantasy Explorers in October as Gravity Rush 2, initially thought to be exclusive to the Vita, is now only available on Sony’s home console.
PlayStation finally looks like it’s getting back to its exclusive churning ways in 2016 and 2017 respectively as Microsoft have trounced the Japanese publisher in exclusives output for the first 2 years of this console generation. Capcom’s Deep Down is still nowhere in sight after an initial reveal during the unveiling of PlayStation 4 more than three years ago, but fans can take solace in an announcement for Sucker Punch’s second PS4 title after inFamous: Second Son somewhere on the horizon with the game probably launching in 2018. And for those anticipating Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding, it probably won’t hit PlayStation 4 until 2020.