This is a big one boys. u/FLACO1942 on r/PS5 subreddit has got info on not one, not two but a total of 18 upcoming PS5 exclusives from Sony’s First Party Studios around the world. Some of the PS5 exclusives mentioned here are confirmed to be in various stages of development while others are just rumours based on speculations. Today, we’re here to give you a brief overview of what’s coming on PS5.
Arrowhead Game Studios (Magicka, Gauntlet, Helldivers)
Testament
Arrowhead was a small Swedish studio that made titles like Magicka and Helldivers. That was until they decided to work make a AAA game. a project that would require not only the attention of the entire team but also to grow the studio way beyond the 35 employees that worked on Arrowhead around that time.
By 2018, we came across the early details of the game and learned that it’s a third-person, purely online co-op game and friendly fire is making a comeback. In early 2019, some Arrowhead developers were spotted at GDC wearing jackets with a “Testament Dev Team” written in the back. While recapping 2019, it was stated on the Arrowhead website that they had made a “butt-ton of progress” on the game and that by the end of the year the studio had already grown to roughly 60 people.
Bend Studio (Siphon Filter, Days Gone)
Days Gone Sequel
Days Gone ends on a cliffhanger and a Sony PR guy said that Days Gone was seen as a “franchise” in Sony’s eyes, stating that “the goal is always to make a game that people love and want more of”. At the release and throughout the year, Days Gone made solid numbers that put the game in limelight.
Later that year, Bend Studio managing director Chris Reese kind of teased that a sequel was in the works when asked about it during an interview: “This is a world that we want to keep breathing more life into, and explore many, many different avenues. So who knows, we’ll see!” The world of Day’s Gone has a lot of potential to explore, making it a perfect title for PS5 exclusives line-up.
Bluepoint Games (Metal Gear Solid, Uncharted, Shadow of the Colossus, Demon’s Souls)
Bloodborne Remastered
We’ve been hearing about Bloodborne Remastered for PS5 for quite some time now. From Software wanted to release Bloodborne on PC, but that would’ve required a ton of work since the game logic was built around frame rate and a PC port meant a frame rate independent logic. The last time From Software tried to change the inner logic of an engine; it resulted in the infamous PC port of the first Dark Souls.
NeoGAF user Celine.D.Sykes – who previously discussed this project in February 2019 on the ResetEra forums said “Making a long story short, Sony said they were interested in a potential Bloodborne remaster for PS5, with a lot more work done, as some QoL added and some cut-content being introduced. Both From Software and Sony agreed to not just up the resolution and the framerate, but to make something great. FromSoftware has been authorized to release the game on PC, but only some months after the remaster hits PS5.”
Unannounced Title
On November 20th 2020, in response to a user who claimed that the rumoured Bluepoint acquisition by Sony would be very boring as far as hype goes, KatharsisT said: “If you knew what Bluepoint is on at the moment, you wouldn’t say that (Yeah, it’s a hype post [and] you’ll have to wait to know what it is)”. Shortly after that, a mod stepped in to say that “KatharsisT has shown sufficient evidence to support this claim.”
A couple of posts later, MarsipanRumpan – the guy behind the Bluepoint acquisition rumour – also backed the statements made by KatharsisT “I’m totally on your side. Talked with my source, I think we have the same info regarding their next remake. People who aren’t hyped for Bluepoint don’t know what their next project is as you said. Because that shit is [mindblowing].”
From Software (Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Deráciné)
Unannounced Title
MarsipanRumpan – the guy who recently reported about Bluepoint’s acquisition on ResetEra, reported that Sony and From Software are working together on new PS5 exclusives directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki. However, given that From Software already has two games in the pipeline, Elden Ring and a new Armored Core game, it will be a while before we have our first look at this unannounced title.
Guerrilla Games (Killzone, Horizon)
Unannounced Title
In October 2018, Chris Lee – former multiplayer designer on several SOCOM titles at Slant Six Games and on Ubisoft’s R6 Siege – joined Guerrilla as principal game designer on Larouche’s project. Apart from the fact that Lee’s hiring makes it pretty clear that Guerrilla’s second team is working on a shooter game of some sorts, it’s worth pointing out that Lee lists “cooperative and competitive multiplayer, open-world systemic gameplay and online social experiences” as his current interests on his LinkedIn profile – with the open-world bit being especially interesting as it was also mentioned in certain job listings for the project in 2019. In August 2020, Guerrilla moved to a new office where they can accommodate 400 people, as compared to 250 at the previous site.
However, given that Guerrilla’s entire attention is currently focused on Horizon Forbidden West, one of the most ambitious PS5 exclusives launch title, it won’t be until 2021 that we have our first look at the upcoming title.
Insomniac Games (Resistance, Ratchet & Clank, Marvel’s Spider-Man)
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
The recently released Marvel’s Spider-Man Miles Morales entered development in May 2018 under the direction of Brian Horton, while Intihar was finishing up his work on the original Marvel’s Spider-Man, which came out in September of that year. So right after wrapping up the first game and with Miles Morales in the hands of a separate team, Intihar started preparing the next main entry in the series as teased in January 2019 when he posted on Twitter “Few things are more nerve-wracking than sharing your first story draft to others.”
A few game theorists have teased that the next Spider-Man game could be set in somewhere in Europe or Tokyo as New York had become a redundant setting and Peter could move out of the city in the name of a ‘reporting assignment’. However, due to dubious sources, those claims have been so far dismissed.
Unlike Miles Morales, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is stated to be a one of PS5 exclusives as opposed to a multi-generation release.
Japan Studio (Gravity Rush, The Last Guardian, Astro)
RaySpace
u/Ruin4r, the Reddit user who leaked God of War, The Last Guardian, a The Last Of Us sequel all the way back in 2014, had mentioned an “unnamed space game” in his original leaks.
In December 2017, SIE trademarked “RaySpace” in Canada – which most probably was the final title for the “unnamed space game” mentioned by Ruin4r. That same month, Japan Studio’s award-winning creative director Tsutomu Kouno stated in an interview “I have not been able to announce a new title in a long time, but in 2018, I would like to announce what I am preparing”. Japan Studio producer Teruyuki Toriyama – who has been teasing this project since 2015, describing it in multiple occasions as an “ambitious (PS5 exclusive) title” – also promised an announcement in 2018.
But 2018 went by without any sort of reveal regarding this project and in December, Toriyama once again teased an announcement for the coming year “In 2019, we are preparing for the debut of the unannounced title(s) currently in production”. 2019 and even 2020 went by without any sort of reveal during. It’s unlikely that RaySpace is cancelled since Sony isn’t likely to pull the plug on a game that has been in development for six years. On the contrary, it’s probably the fact that Japan Studios has been putting their attention to other major projects and RaySpace is just buried somewhere under them.
London Studio (The Getaway, PlayStation VR Worlds, Blood & Truth)
The London Studio is Sony’s first part studio dedicated solely to VR titles. On October 2019, VR consultant Callum Hurley posted on Twitter that he had learned about an “exciting new PlayStation VR game coming out of London Studio” through someone who had just playtested the title. He also vaguely implied it was a Horizon VR game and, when news outlets started to report on his tweets, he apologized to the development team as he didn’t expect such coverage.
Recently leaked PSVR patents reveal Sony is developing a new PSVR for PS5. So it’s quite likely that London Studios PS5 exclusives will debut along side the upcoming PSVR.
Naughty Dog (Uncharted, The Last Of Us)
The Last Of Us: Factions
On September 26th 2019, Naughty Dog posted a statement on Twitter in which they basically announced that the multiplayer mode they had planned for The Last Of Us: Part II had grown beyond an additional mode that could be included alongside the game’s enormous singleplayer campaign, so they decided to turn it into a standalone game in order to not compromise on the ambitions of the studio’s multiplayer team.
Then in April 2020, a short gameplay clip from a March 2018 build of the multiplayer leaked online as part of a bigger leak that revealed tons of story spoilers and cutscenes from The Last Of Us: Part II. Assuming that this TLOU multiplayer game is planned for a release on both PS4 and PS5 sometime next year, we would be in front of a title with over four years of overall dev time – meaning that the project might be greater in scope than what most of us are expecting it to be.
Unannounced Title
On October 10th 2018, movie industry insider Daniel Ritchman reported that Naughty Dog was in the process of casting an actor to play the lead role on an upcoming game. According to the casting description, the studio was looking for a “Black/African American male, 40s to 60s, short to medium length hair, with a body type similar to those in the images below, strong but not chiselled”.
This doesn’t really tell us anything about the upcoming game but if we can be sure of something, it’s the fact that it’ll be quite likely a single-player, narrative-driven game.
New San Diego Studio
In April 2018, David Hall, former Double Helix/Amazon Game Studios, joins an unnamed SIE studio in San Diego as game director on an unannounced title. The following month, Quentin Cobb, former singleplayer/multiplayer designer at Naughty Dog on the Uncharted series and The Last Of Us, also joins this new studio. Since then, rumours about a new Sony first-party studio have been circulating due to a job listing – also from April – in which it was stated that “PlayStation is building a new game development team in partnership with the Visual Arts Service Group” to work on a “high visibility project” described as a third-person action/adventure game “developed in collaboration with a major Sony studio.”
In November 2020, both Quentin Cobb and John Bautista left the studio and the internet started to speculate that Sony had shut down the studio and cancelled the project, something that Bautista denied by stating that “the studio is still there and the project is still ongoing,” hopefully working on some amazing PS5 exclusives.
Santa Monica Studio (God of War)
Unannounced Title
While we all know about God of War Ragnarok, the sequel to the ultra popular reboot of God of War, there’s somthing more up SMS’s sleeve. On April 12th 2018, Cory Barlog spoke during an interview about his desire to work on a new IP “I really would love to create something of my own next. Something that really, really is truly 100% coming from my original vision. That would be awesome, but we have to see if I can convince Sony on that one”. Over half a year later, in November, film director Duncan Jones – who had just met with Cory looking for his opinion regarding a certain script – said on Twitter that “If you think that God of War is [Cory’s] magnum opus, just you wait!”
Sucker Punch Productions (inFAMOUS, Ghost of Tsushima)
Ghost of Tsushima Sequel
There’s no official word or leaks anywhere about the sequel. All the information we have is that Sucker Punch was looking for a narrative writer for an upcoming project with “knowledge of feudal Japanese history.” Since Ghost of Tsushima’s story ended on a closed note and there were no cliff hangers, it’s quite unlikely that the upcoming title is a direct sequel. But then again, Sucker Punch mastered the oriental sword fights and the feel of feudal Japan, so they won’t let go of such valuable assets just after one game. There’s no public ETA on the development either. All we can say for sure is that there is an amazing PS5 exclusive set in feudal Japan coming soon.
Supermassive Games (Until Dawn, Hidden Agenda, The Inpatient)
Unannounced Titles
In November 2018, Supermassive Games managing director Pete Samuels confirmed that the studio was “working on several unannounced PlayStation exclusives” and stated that their relationship with Sony “is still excellent”, even though they choose another publisher for The Dark Pictures Anthology as they wanted to reach the widest possible audience.
Wild Sheep Studio
WiLD
Okay, I saved one of the best PS5 exclusives for the last. All the way back in GamesCom 2014, Sony showcased a new studio with a brand new ambitious IP. Michel Ancel, the man behind Rayman and Beyond Good and Evil, was at the helm of the studio. It was described as an open-world “potentially as big as Europe”, day and night cycles, dynamic weather and seasons, as well as a seamless online system, in which you could play not only as a human but also as any living creature. At Paris Games Week, Sony showed off exciting gameplay footage where the player could be seen taking control of multiple creatures.
But then things quiet downed a bit. The most notable piece of news from this period, however, was an interview with WiLD producer Mitsuo Hirakawa from November 2017. During said interview, he stated “We are not going to rush [Michel Ancel] to make something that he doesn’t want to compromise on.” and then he followed “Even experienced developers make mistakes. We have to make mistakes to find the right choices for the design of the game and we want to provide [Wild Sheep Studio] with all the support necessary, so that’s why things sometimes do take a lot longer than we expect but we feel that WiLD deserves the extra time and quality before it comes to the public.”
Moving onto something else, in July 2018, both Michel Ancel and Wild Sheep’s CEO and art director Celine Tellier visited Guerrilla Games. This is interesting, because considering that WiLD went through some serious development hell difficulties, it is not farfetched to think that one of the solutions proposed by Sony to one of the several the problems the game was facing at the time was to drop the in-house engine that Wild Sheep was using up to that point and move the game over to DECIMA – the Guerrilla Games engine that has powered PS4 titles such as Killzone: Shadow Fall and Horizon: Zero Dawn but also Until Dawn and Death Stranding. Such a change could come in handy, especially when we take into account that, just like Horizon and Death Stranding, WiLD is an open-world title that takes place in natural environments.
On September 18th 2020, Michel Ancel announced his departure from the games industry and regarding Beyond: Good & Evil 2 and WiLD he stated that “since many months now the teams are autonomous and the projects are going super well. Beautiful things to be seen soon”. Hopefully, we get to see something next year.
That’s a wrap on all the upcoming PS5 exclusives that we have a whiff on.