Yo everyone—something genuinely exciting is happening at PlayStation, and Jay Peters over at The Verge just broke it down beautifully! After years of painful live-service misfires that've been costing them big time, Sony's clearly pivoting back to what made the brand legendary: premium, narrative-driven single-player epics. Their recent hour-long State of Play showcase proved it—they literally opened AND closed with these kinds of games in a masterclass strategy move!
The show kicked off strong with Marvel's Wolverine from Insomniac Games—over seven minutes of bloody action footage showing Logan slicing and dicing his way through enemies while trying to rescue captured mutants, including an awesome moment where he teams up with Jean Grey for some serious combo damage. This looks like it'll follow right in the tradition of their beloved Ratchet & Clank series and Spider-Man games when it launches this September (I'm super excited because Insomniac is definitely one of PlayStation's strongest first-party studios). But THE real headline-grabbing moment? God of War: Laufey—a third mainline entry where Faye Kratos takes center stage as the protagonist! The 23-minute trailer looked absolutely phenomenal with gripping combat, magical world exploration across that beautiful Norse setting we've come to love from the recent entries (including her iconic sword and those charming sidekicks like Jack Quaid voicing a gelatinous cube). This feels SO much like what we got in 2018 when Kratos' relationship with Atreus was so deeply emotional, but now flipped around.
And honestly? The live-service drought is exactly why this refocusing makes sense—Concord's abrupt shutdown after months of struggling, Marathon and Destiny developer Bungie both doing layoffs (though the upcoming season 2 update should hopefully help), that cancelled multiplayer game based on The Last of Us series which was announced about a year ago as we saw last October in news reports from then. Even more importantly, Horizon Fairgames—first revealed three years back at an event but with no clear release window yet despite Sony pushing it so hard since February when they first mentioned new multi-player projects—and that God of War game (which I believe was shown publicly about two weeks ago). Meanwhile Helldivers 2 keeps climbing in player counts, and Gran Turismo 7 continues to chug along. There's also some third-party single-player titles launching very soon—Remedy Entertainment's Control Resonant on September 24th with the original coming June 9th (I've been playing through both since early August), Konami Silent Hill Townfall same date, and Capcom Onimusha: Way of the Sword just two days later. And I'm SUPER pumped that we got a look at Tomb Raider's new reboot from Crystal Dynamics launching sometime in February next year (which would put it around late January or early February)—I think this is their version as they've been building toward releasing an updated entry over these last few months of 2019 to mid-2026.
What wasn't there was almost zero talk about live-service—only Marathon's season two update and nothing on Fairgames (which, like I said before) —nothing brand-new from Sony that week either when they announced some unannounced projects back in the February timeframe of this year so far. Still tons we don't know yet though! God of War Laufey hasn't had its release date confirmed beyond saying "soon." And there are still question marks about Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet from Naughty Dog—still without an official launch window—and a full trilogy remaster coming to PS5 that was originally announced back at the 2019 E3 showcase (which is kind of wild when you think about it). This feels like PlayStation finally remembers why they're relevant!
Source: https://www.theverge.com/games/942520/playstation-wolverine-god-of-war-laufey-state-of-play-june-2026
The show kicked off strong with Marvel's Wolverine from Insomniac Games—over seven minutes of bloody action footage showing Logan slicing and dicing his way through enemies while trying to rescue captured mutants, including an awesome moment where he teams up with Jean Grey for some serious combo damage. This looks like it'll follow right in the tradition of their beloved Ratchet & Clank series and Spider-Man games when it launches this September (I'm super excited because Insomniac is definitely one of PlayStation's strongest first-party studios). But THE real headline-grabbing moment? God of War: Laufey—a third mainline entry where Faye Kratos takes center stage as the protagonist! The 23-minute trailer looked absolutely phenomenal with gripping combat, magical world exploration across that beautiful Norse setting we've come to love from the recent entries (including her iconic sword and those charming sidekicks like Jack Quaid voicing a gelatinous cube). This feels SO much like what we got in 2018 when Kratos' relationship with Atreus was so deeply emotional, but now flipped around.
And honestly? The live-service drought is exactly why this refocusing makes sense—Concord's abrupt shutdown after months of struggling, Marathon and Destiny developer Bungie both doing layoffs (though the upcoming season 2 update should hopefully help), that cancelled multiplayer game based on The Last of Us series which was announced about a year ago as we saw last October in news reports from then. Even more importantly, Horizon Fairgames—first revealed three years back at an event but with no clear release window yet despite Sony pushing it so hard since February when they first mentioned new multi-player projects—and that God of War game (which I believe was shown publicly about two weeks ago). Meanwhile Helldivers 2 keeps climbing in player counts, and Gran Turismo 7 continues to chug along. There's also some third-party single-player titles launching very soon—Remedy Entertainment's Control Resonant on September 24th with the original coming June 9th (I've been playing through both since early August), Konami Silent Hill Townfall same date, and Capcom Onimusha: Way of the Sword just two days later. And I'm SUPER pumped that we got a look at Tomb Raider's new reboot from Crystal Dynamics launching sometime in February next year (which would put it around late January or early February)—I think this is their version as they've been building toward releasing an updated entry over these last few months of 2019 to mid-2026.
What wasn't there was almost zero talk about live-service—only Marathon's season two update and nothing on Fairgames (which, like I said before) —nothing brand-new from Sony that week either when they announced some unannounced projects back in the February timeframe of this year so far. Still tons we don't know yet though! God of War Laufey hasn't had its release date confirmed beyond saying "soon." And there are still question marks about Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet from Naughty Dog—still without an official launch window—and a full trilogy remaster coming to PS5 that was originally announced back at the 2019 E3 showcase (which is kind of wild when you think about it). This feels like PlayStation finally remembers why they're relevant!
Source: https://www.theverge.com/games/942520/playstation-wolverine-god-of-war-laufey-state-of-play-june-2026