Laufey in God of War for the PS5. Photograph: Sony
From God of War to Until Dawn – seven reveals from last night’s PlayStation event. The PS5 era has been in some ways disappointing for Sony – on Tuesday, the company revealed a slate of games they hope will change that. Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here.
PlayStation’s future has looked a little uncertain these past few years. Although the PS5 has sold well and been very profitable, the brand is far from the runaway market leader it was in the PS2 days. Earlier this week, Game File dug into Sony’s most recent earnings reports to illustrate how PlayStation has been selling fewer and fewer of its own flagship games since a peak during the pandemic. About 54.1 million copies of games either developed or published by Sony were sold in the 2018 financial year; in 2025, it sold 32.1 million.
Sony has put out some great homegrown games since the PS5 was released in 2020, from Astro Bot to Ghost of Yōtei, but it has also had some expensive and very public failures and cancellations. PlayStation boss Jim Ryan, who retired in 2024, placed big bets on live-service games and only a few panned out (hello, Helldivers). Sony also seems to have rolled back on releasing its single-player PS5 games on PC after a polite interval of time, suggesting it wants to preserve what advantage and exclusivity it has.
Meanwhile, its longtime console rival Xbox may have faded into the background as a sales competitor – the PS5 has outsold the Xbox Series S/X by approximately three to one – but it has become a strong publishing competitor, having bought up tens of development studios alongside Activision and Bethesda. Then there’s Nintendo, whose exclusive games for the Switch and Switch 2 consoles have performed significantly better than Sony’s over the last decade. (The top-selling Sony-developed PS4 game was Spider-Man, at 22.68 million. The top-selling Nintendo-developed Switch game was Mario Kart 8 Deluxe at … 71 million.)
So what is Sony going to do in the next few years, as we enter a later stage of the PS5 lifecycle? Will it play safe, or diversify? Perhaps revive some older games for nostalgic millennials? Thanks to a State of Play live-stream last night, we now have some answers. Here’s what’s on the slate:
Marvel’s Wolverine | 15 September 2026
Photograph: Marvel. Californian developer Insomniac’s next Marvel adaptation after the somewhat wholesome Spider-Man adventures is an exceptionally violent Wolverine game. Seriously, we see those claws go through about seven people in the first 30 seconds of the demo, before fellow mutant Jean Grey shows up and starts killing people with telekinesis instead. A motorbike chase follows, and a showdown atop a moving vehicle. Truly all the Hollywood-esque action a player could possibly want, if also rather more blood spatter than some of us can take. There was also less 18-rated Marvel action in the form of comic-book-style fighting game Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls (coming 6 August).
Silent Hill: Townfall | 24 September 2026
Photograph: Sony. This Silent Hill spin-off, from the Scottish developer Screen Burn, looks excellent. It’s a horror game set in a misty town on the east coast of Scotland. Expect: many disgusting creatures that arise from the depths of its characters’ worst imaginings. Many eerily abandoned little seaside homes. Many ominous shots of closed doors at the end of hallways. And much creepy radio static.
Onimusha: Way of the Sword | 25 September 2026
Photograph: Sony/Capcom. Capcom revives another of its classic PlayStation series in this Japanese-mythology action game, in which you slice up demons with a katana. (It will have to work hard to compete with the Nioh games and FromSoftware’s Sekiro, which have filled this niche in the two decades Onimusha has been away.) The demo is available to try now.
Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis | 12 February 2027
Photograph: Sony/Amazon. Although this was announced late last year, we’ve just got our first good look at it. It’s a remake of the very first Tomb Raider, and they really mean it – it looks like a new Uncharted game. It’s got all the classics: Egyptian tombs, jungle temples, T-Rexes, and Lara Croft looks badass in a modernised version of her classic outfit.
The Lost Wild | 2027
Photograph: Sony/Annapurna. For a moment I truly thought this was a Dino Crisis revival, but no: it’s a first-person game where you appear to spend most of your time either running or hiding from dinosaurs, cowering under things as terrifying creatures stalk you through mist.
Until Dawn 2 | 2027
Photograph: Sony. A sequel to one of the most enthusiastically adored horror games ever made, in which a group of young idiot ghost-hunters are stuck on an abandoned island while filming a documentary. Your decisions determine who lives or dies.
God of War: Laufey | TBC
Photograph: Sony. This was the big announcement, kept right until the end of last night’s stream, from Santa Monica Studio. We open as God of War series protagonist Kratos ceremonially cremates the wrapped body of his wife Laufey, also known as Faye, one of the last Norse giants, their son Atreus looking on. She reconstitutes as stardust and enters the afterlife – and we finally get not just to meet her, but play as her. She fights a few floral-headed plant zombies that gave me Last of Us clicker flashbacks, accompanied by something that looks like a cross between an axolotl and a bulldog, before being dragged into a kind of between-worlds prison for dead gods.
Laufey can seemingly do everything Kratos can, including punching gigantic demonic myth creatures in the face and squeezing herself through slender gaps while the next scene loads. The spectacle of this series remains unmatched. (Also, she fights alongside a talking gelatinous cube called Phranque.) Watch the 20-minute teaser on your lunch break, it’s worth it. I have been waiting a long time for a blockbuster game in which you play as a very angry mother.
The best of the rest
I know many devotees of the air-combat military melodrama Ace Combat; it is at once extremely committed to its bit, and totally unserious. The next instalment is out on 2 October. Stuntman: Hollywood is perhaps the most unexpected comeback of the year so far, an extravagantly nostalgic, high-speed stunt driving game that strategically deployed both the Knight Rider theme and a DeLorean. Ahead of that, September brings a sequel called Control: Resonant from beloved Finnish developer Remedy, makers of gaming’s most charmingly mindbending psychological thrillers. In October, harmless (and armless) French platforming hero Rayman returns in a wonderfully animated four-player platformer called Rayman Legends Retold. Chef Bancho is a prequel to the beloved sushi restaurant/arcade diving simulator game Dave the Diver, following one character’s journey to sushi master. Horror game Ill (expected in 2027) remains the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen in a game showcase. In the Japanese-made action game Kemuri (coming in 2027) you are an eternally reincarnating ghost hunter, using their own paranormal phenomena against them; it promises “chaos and laughter with your friends”.
And lastly, in extremely Keza-specific news, my favourite absurd PlayStation 2 music game, Gitaroo Man, is coming to the PlayStation Plus’s classic catalogue. You’ll be getting a whole essay about that the next time there’s a slow news week …
What to play
Extremely silly … Pictonico. Photograph: Nintendo. Nintendo has released an extremely silly smartphone game called Pictonico, in which you play a suite of ridiculous WarioWare-style 10-second micro-games using the photos on your device. The games use faces from your snaps, so you might pry crabs from the face of your bestie, or chase a baby-faced version of your partner around the screen with a lollipop, or lather your own beautiful hair.
It’s funny, absurd and even a little gross. If you’d rather not give the game access to your whole camera roll, it’s easy to customise which photos it can select from. (Nobody wants to suddenly find themselves playing a parachute mini-game featuring the smiling face of their recent ex.) It’s £6.99 for the first pack of 50 games and kids especially will find it unendingly hilarious.
Available on: Android, iPhone. Estimated playtime: seconds to minutes.
What to read
Taking a hike … the Steam Deck. Photograph: Valve. In grim news that reflects the rising price of gaming, Valve’s Steam Deck – a brilliant gadget that makes it a lot easier to actually play all those games you pick up in sales – has increased in price by more than 40%. It now costs a minimum of £649. Gene Park at the Washington Post shares the story (£) of the champion fighting-game player Ludovic Mbock, whose friends in the community rallied to help when he was detained by ICE in February. I have sunk more than 200 hours of The Witcher 3 over the past decade, but developer CD Projekt Red is not ready to release me yet – some surprise new content for this venerable gothic-fantasy adventure is coming in 2027. Summer Game Fest livestreams kick off this weekend, showing off what game developers have lined up for the next year or two. GamesRadar has a guide to all the showcases, with dates and times for PDT, EST and BST zones. For Teen Vogue, Nicole Carpenter asks: why is there so little body diversity in video games?
What to click
Nex Playground: the family game-night gadget that revives the spirit of the Wii. If you want to run your first marathon in your 50s, it helps to be chased by zombies | Dominik Diamond. Call of controversy? Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 imagines a revived Korean war. To receive the complete version of Pushing Buttons in your inbox every Wednesday, please subscribe here.
