The first big showcase of the summer gaming revelation season is always important. It sets the tone of emotion for revelations during and after and can change the mood of the whole season depending on whether it is good or bad. This year, that honor went to Sony’s gaming status on June 2, which featured the upcoming PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and PlayStation VR2 games.
Although the showcase did not include God of War: Ragnarok as many PlayStation fans expected, it was still a great show. It included a number of shocking third-party game announcements, demonstrated the power of PlayStation VR2 with several trailers, and even contained a surprise PC port ad for one of Sony’s most popular series. Since everything that was announced on State of Play was strong, I’m even more excited about what could turn out to be a fantastic summer for video game revelations.
The best state of play so far
For the past two years, Sony has been releasing its most important announcements for a “PlayStation Showcase” in September, well into the summer gaming revelation season. As a result, the state of the game often suffers because the games included are not as interesting as those of Sony and make viewers want more. This State of Play still technically followed this formula, out of the PC port for Marvel’s Spider-Man. We didn’t see God of War Ragnarok or Marvel’s Wolverine in this show and we didn’t even get a price or release date for PlayStation VR2. Fortunately, the featured games were mostly of a much larger caliber than previous State of Play storefronts.
The show began with the confirmation of a remake of Resident Evil 4, one of the most celebrated horror games of all time. This will probably be one of the most memorable announcements of the summer. Still, the show offered more exciting news, including detailed trailers for highly anticipated games like Street Fighter 6 and Final Fantasy XVI. It also contained some great AA and indie games, with Stray and Rollerdrome in particular. While specific details about the release date and price of PlayStation VR 2 are still frightening, prominent games like Horizon Call of the Mountain and Resident Evil Village proved that it should be an impressive piece of virtual reality hardware.
It wasn’t as prominent as Sony’s E3 2015 conference, which featured like The Last Guardian, Horizon Zero Dawn, Final Fantasy VII Remake, and Shenmue 3, as it wasn’t as focused on exclusive or first-part titles. Fortunately, it was much more impressive than any previous game state, as the previous ones were often pretty poor out of one or two big revelations like Iron Man VR or Exoprimal. Since Sony has achieved an impressive game state without making many first-party revelations, it really makes me expect Microsoft and Geoff Keighley to bring their A game as well.
Trend maker
No new title in the rest of 2022 is likely to destroy people like Elden Ring or Kirby and the Forgotten Land from Game of the Year awards and summaries. That said, these summer presentations are our last chance to find out which contenders are still on the horizon. In addition, we can be excited about what is to come in 2023, as the video game industry is finally beginning to recover from the delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The State of Play did it, highlighting games like Stray and Final Fantasy XVI, the latter of which will not arrive until next summer. Summer Game Fest, the Xbox and Bethesda Showcase and a potential Nintendo show now have a high level to satisfy if they want to impress, but if they can do it and show their own games, this could be the start of an amazing summer for in video game ads.
After these summer showcases, we should better understand exactly how the next year and a half of games will accumulate. Hopefully, the summer game showcases only get better from here. And even if they don’t, I’m happy with all the exciting announcements we’ve received in this State of Play.