Sony Presented A Two Hour State Of Play … But What Did We Learn?
by Sage Ashford
Last Thursday, Sony presented its longest State of Play yet. Clocking in at an hour and forty-five minutes, the digital showcase actually featured multiple events at the same time. The first was a traditional State of Play, while the second focused on Japanese games, hosted by popular voice actor Yuki Kaji. But did we need a nearly two-hour showcase of upcoming PlayStation games?
Going off the assembled titles, definitely not. And while normally that comes down to a matter of taste, this State of Play was just poorly planned and presented. The games were interesting. But for whatever reason, several of them were presented multiple times across both States of Play. Meanwhile, much of the rest felt like a reminder of titles releasing soon, like Marvel’s Wolverine, the Ghost of Yotei and Gran Turismo 7 expansions, and the Saros DLC. Oh, and the GTA 6 DualSense controllers — which are admittedly beautiful:
That said, they’re also $84.99 or £74.99 a piece. Of course, they’re likely to sell out fast, so anyone who wants them will have to hop on it.
Bandai-Namco highlighted Gundam: Rogue Orbit again. This time, with a trailer detailing more of the game’s world and the main characters. While the original trailer aimed to be more mysterious, this one demonstrated far improved combat, and some pretty impressive customization for the Gundam Helix. Best of all: they announced a release date, as the game comes to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and Steam on March 5th.
After a mysterious premiere at the beginning of the year, Rev.Noir has popped up again. This time, Konami has a full story trailer for the JRPG. The story focuses on Asch and Fine, two youths looking to stop the Lightfall, a strange phenomenon that wipes out anyone it touches. While the game’s UI looks suspiciously like Genshin Impact, the game itself looks like a fun JRPG experience, one that’s apparently set for a 2027 release date.
To me, the coolest looking new game at the show had to be Rhapsody in Scarlet, a new action-adventure title set in 1920s New York City. It follows Ellie, a young jazz singer who also happens to be a magus. While trying to pursue her dreams, she gets caught up in an incident which leads her to working with Illya, the leader of a magus organization known as the Seekers.
A video game focused on an actual mage character that has to fight from long distance and rely on a magical beast to do close-quarters combat? This game definitely looks early from the trailers being shown, but there’s lots of promise here. If this is a late 2027 or even a 2028 game, there’s plenty of time to polish and make this something special.
Final Fantasy VII Revelation enjoyed another ten-minute trailer, offering new glimpses of both the Highwind and the new Chocobo partner you can take into battle. Between that and the ability to explore the world as any member of Avalanche, Revelation looks incredible. That said, at this point I honestly didn’t need anything else other than the release date. Fortunately, Square had my back and announced the game arrives April 8th on consoles and PC. More impressively, all three games are available for purchase together for just $84.99. I’m not even sure most people would be able to beat the first two games before FF 7 Revelation launches next Spring.
The biggest news of this showcase was the shortage of new games — nearly everything in both States of Play are things previously seen elsewhere. That’s known to happen occasionally, especially in this era where there are always new showcases happening. Still, it feels more like they’re not showing anything new because there’s nothing left to show. Regardless of how much people don’t want it, the PlayStation 6 won’t be delayed past Spring 2028. With that in mind, it’s likely some of their final AAA PS5 games are God of War: Laufey and Intergalactic. Everything else would look almost suspiciously good even for a PlayStation 5 Pro, so they’re forced to stay quiet for a while.
