Julius

This will release May 21st – perhaps delayed from the above PSN Store leak of April 21st? Officially coming to all major platforms at launch. A whole bunch of asterisks in the trailer description, doesn't exactly instill confidence: Welp.

Five more new levels start being rolled out, starting today – a whole new galaxy! Why wasn't this in the State of Play?! GOTY just got GOTYer! "Armored Hardcore"...uh, after the announcement last night of the PS1 games coming to PS+ Classics, that's got to be an Armored Core level surely, right? And to read into it further, between this and the PS1 games coming to PS+...I mean, this all seems to be leading to a new Armored Core or something, surely?! And "Cock-A-Doodle-Doom"...a Doom level? New one coming in May after all. No comment on "Hard to Bear", I mean, besides...

Rated in Brazil: Going to be a long month. Any bets on where it'll get rated next?

Yeah, definitely! The PS2 games are a total mess in terms of publishers, in Europe they were split between Ubisoft, Crave Entertainment, Metro3D, Agetec, Indie Games Productions, and 505, and the situation was only a little better over in the US in terms of the number of publishers in the mix. This is a good sign though I feel, and From Software are in such a good spot these days that I wonder if they've spoken to previous publishers (where possible?) about getting them back under their wing outside of Japan; might be an odd thing to bring up, but they did buy the rights to Elden Ring back from Bandai Namco, so I don't think it would be impossible to think they might do the same for some of their legacy titles? But, yeah, I'd love for them to come over simply because some of them cost a small fortune (last I checked Last Raven was around £200) – mentioned it in the PS+ thread but I've been weighing up doing a deep dive into the series after loving VI so much, but Armored Core on PS1 costs a fair bit now (I've been back on forth on picking it up several times over the last 12 months), we never got Phantasma or Arena meaning I wouldn't be able to move save data forward or experience those games, the PS2 games can be expensive, etc., so this would be perfect for me and finally allow me to do so! Hopefully these come with some decent button remapping options because I remember these PS1 games were designed without the analog sticks in mind (don't think they used them until Nexus I think it was?) and can apparently be a bit of a pain to play because of that. Might mean I finally get to use the infamous Armored Core grip More selfishly, I also hope it means two other things: 1. The next Armored Core ain't that far away – while the franchise has been active, it's never gone more than 2 years between releases! From Software is in a very different place now, but with VI having figured out the fundamentals of combat and mission structure, and with Miyazaki not at the helm the entire time and a dedicated team behind it, I wonder if this means we'll see another AC in the next 12 months? I can dream! 2. More From Software legacy ports – outside of AC, I'd love to see King's Field and some of their titles which came out before their breakout success with the Souls games come to the service. Hey, throw in Kuri Kuri Mix for good measure and nostalgia's sake while you're at it!

Sony's quarterly earnings report came out this morning for the quarter ending December 31st 2024 – and PlayStation 5 is performing spectacularly. • 75 million units sold LTD, now just 1.5 million units behind PS4 when launch-aligned. • second best Q3/quarter for PlayStation of all-time in terms of console unit sales – 9.5m (best was PS4 in Q3 2016, during which the Pro and Slim were released). • emphasis placed on diversifying line-up with more family and live-service games, with the success of Astro Bot and Helldivers II highlighted specifically in this slide: • record Q3 revenues and operating profits. • 42% of PS5s sold in the quarter were to new users. • PS5 shipped 20.2 million units in 2024, meaning 20+ million units shipped for two years consecutively. PS4 peaked with calendar year shipments of 19.5 million units in 2016. Curious about those new users – got to imagine it's a combination of Xbox owners coming over and the runaway breakout success of games like Stellar Blade and Black Myth: Wukong in the emerging East Asian markets? Infinity Nikki, too, no doubt. Done all this while having a relatively tepid year in terms of first-party line-up last year...and GTA VI (along with all that lovely GTA Online money) is still to come. If it releases this Fall as they're saying it will, then there's no doubt in my mind that PlayStation are going to have a new record for number of consoles sold in a single quarter, will overtake the PS4 lifetime sales when launch-aligned at long last, and I imagine will pass the 100 million mark for PS5s sold when reporting next year's EOY financials (for the FY ending 31st March 2026). Wild. Yōtei is going to move a good number of units too! Also – that Astro Bot call out! Relegated into the back pages if it was present at all, and now it's the poster child for wanting to diversify their line-up of games, specifically shouting out more family games. Exactly the reaction I wanted to see following it's success – do they have time to bring that aim to life by the end of the PS5's life, I wonder?

More details courtesy of the PS Blog: Funny how the quality of writing in the blog post kind of devolves as it goes on a little, like with "npc" not even being capitalised don't mean to poke fun but there's just something funny to me about the idea that Gregory Louden wrote this up in a bit of a rush on his phone

Forgot to come back and report on this – the event sucked ass. Totally Official Event Score (TOES) – 3.0/10. They announced a date for Marvel Fighting Collection 2 and announced the Onimusha 2 remaster, but foolishly didn't shadow-drop it...and even more foolishly, didn't even give it a date. So, yeah, yikes.

Yeah, that was a weird one. Highlights for me were probably the PS1 Armored Core games being announced to come to PS+ Classics (Phantasma and Arena have never been released before in Europe) and The Midnight Walk and Shinobi getting release dates. Lost Record having both parts launch straight onto Plus is a good get too, they've liked up some nice indies this gen as simultaneous Plus launches. What was weird was Capcom having their own event just last week and leaving the new trailer for Way of the Sword and the release date for the Onimusha 2 remaster to PlayStation. Like, seriously? Lost Soul Aside being sent out to die against Nightreign on May 30th too, that one was weird – oof. Otherwise...meh. I need to check the PS Blog for more details on Soros, but if it wasn't Housemarque then I don't think I'd be interested, because it simply wasn't a great trailer. Not shocked Yōtei wasn't here given GTA VI is up in the air but the show was definitely missing that "one more thing" factor, and not for the first time, the flow and structure is so messy – even Nintendo Directs which don't deliver on the gaming side (normally partnership events) consistently get the tone and pacing right. It just feels so...rehearsed and unenthusiastic here? I'm not sure. It feels odd. Days Gone Remastered is a funny one after it was rumoured ahead of the last State of Play in September and I've since played the game (it was fine), with that I think the only huge AAA first-party developed title they've got left without a native PS5 version is God of War 2018, right? No wonder Until Dawn and (supposedly) Gravity Rush 2 have ended up with remasters, they've pretty quickly run out. Bit gutted that there were no dates for Forza or Indy, even if they're Xbox published games so maybe I was getting my hopes too high there, curious to see where those dates drop now – I think Xbox have an event later this month and another next month, so probably at one of those before we hit Spring? Snake Eater getting leaked ahead of time probably took some of the bite out of the event for me, but yeah, I think if I treat it like it didn't leak then I give this a Totally Official Event Score (TOES) of 7.0/10.

Okay, this is interesting but not totally unexpected: PlayStation and Steam share the previously leaked trailer, but Xbox got their own, because, of course, they can't use PlayStation's Ape Escape monkeys for that release, and so... ...they're getting Bomberman instead!

Apparently it meant that it wouldn't show which means this is almost certainly where you're getting that DS2 release date! If I'm remembering right the release date for the first DS was also done separate to PlayStation so I guess this shouldn't be a total shocker? Weirdly enough, the livestream is already up - it will air at 21:00 GMT on 9th March:

New titles and this month's updates announced to be coming during today's State of Play: Extra and Premium Star Wars Jedi: Survivor TopSpin 2K25 Lost Records: Bloom & Rage - Tape 1 (launches into Plus on Feb 18th) SaGa Frontier Remastered Somerville Tin Hearts Mordhau Premium / Classics Patapon 3 Dropship: United Peace Force In the future Lost Records: Bloom & Rage - Tape 2 (April catalog update, launching into Plus on April 15th) Blue Prince (launching into the service this Spring) Abiotic Factor (launching into the service this Summer) Armored Core, Armored Core Project Phantasma, and Armored Core Master of Arena ("Coming Soon") The PS1 Armored Core trilogy is the highlight for me, for sure - I've been eyeing up a copy of the first Armored Core ever since I finished VI, but what was stopping me was knowing that I wouldn't have access to Project Phantasma and Master of Arena, which both never launched in Europe and to which you can carry over save data from the original. I had been thinking about playing them through other means because of this, but it seems like I held out just long enough! Wonder what this means for the rest of the series...as well as if that means we might see another Armored Core announcement this year?

Happy 30th anniversary Housemarque! First look at gameplay later this year. Get in here @drahkon!

Ooze game?!

Holy shit, Benzies? As in: former Rockstar president Benzies? Didn't expect to see him here!

Totally thought Metal Eden was Marathon... Whoops

Here's the remaster none of us asked for: April 25th.

OH MY GOD ALL THE ARMORED CORE PS1 GAMES?!?!?! Phantasma and Master of Arena never released over here before!

Comunicado oficial: Yep, great trailer still on the 43rd watch too

New trailer from tonight's State of Play:

May 23rd: Capcom can be such weirdos

And they've given them the new Onimusha: Way of the Sword trailer?! capcom! what are you doing!

Capcom gave PlayStation the date for the Onimusha 2 remaster? Guys...that's not how you do a presentation!

Well, we're halfway through and Shinobi getting a title and date is definitely the highlight so far

Ughhhhh Borderlands 4 getting a dedicated State of Play? Whyyyyyyyyy

Fineeeeeee I'll play Dave the Diver leave me alone!