Four Takeaways from Sony’s State of Play
Four Takeaways from Sony’s State of Play
Who needs tea leaves when you have livestreams?
Sony broadcast its latest State of Play presentation yesterday afternoon, teasing a big chunk of its PlayStation release lineup for the remainder of 2026 into ’27. The stream left us with plenty to digest, so let us make it a little easier for you by pre-chewing the best tidbits. Here are four notable items:
We’ll be fine without E3.
Do you miss E3? E3 was cool. So many announcements. So many exciting new reveals. And if you had the right press credentials, you got to play a bunch of them and talk to the people who made them. E3 ruled. But, the world is OK without it. E3 was kind of a firehose blast of information and announcements, and a lot of great stuff that didn’t have a stage presence ended up being lost in the shuffle. Breaking it out like this, where the big tentpole press conferences take the form of streams, leaves more space for the little guys to shine—and it allows the big games a little more breathing room, too. Plus, this way, no one has to stand in line for an hour to spend $15 on a poorly heated slice of frozen pizza at the L.A. Convention Center. If you’ve never experienced E3 in person, take our word for it: this is a win.
“Retro” is more about visuals now than game design.
State of Play featured a surprising number of remakes, several of them hailing from the PlayStation 2 era or even earlier. Some of those appear to have been radically overhauled—Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis revamps the extremely rigid and triangular original Tomb Raider into modern movement and visuals—while others mostly look to have been given a fresh coat of paint. Dynasty Warriors 3 pushed the limits of how many dudes could run around slashing one another on PS2, a setup that should translate cleanly to PlayStation 5 now that Koei Tecmo has spruced it up with PS5-caliber visuals. Even Rayman Legends Retold takes a game that felt like a throwback when it debuted 13 years ago (continuing Rayman’s two-dimensional adventures after his excursions into 3D) and modernizes it with nicer visuals. A visually overhauled retro remake of a game that already played like a visually overhauled retro game when it debuted on consoles two generations ago... what even is that? What that is, friend, is “retro” is more a state of mind and appearances than tech. These days, games is games, and freshening up a great classic game for new audiences is no different that giving a great movie from 20 or 30 year ago a 4K remaster for posterity.
There’s still space for new ideas.
Despite all the sequels and remakes, State of Play wasn’t short on games that either had no direct ties to existing properties or else did something so intriguingly different from usual that they make you sit up and take notice. ILL and No Rest for the Wicked appear to offer a new slant on familiar genres (first-person horror and Diablo-style action RPGs, respectively). Kemuri is being headed up by Ikumi Nakamura’s new studio Unseen, so it’s bound to be interesting. The Lost Wild could be the Dino Crisis sequel that the world has been clamoring for since 2003. And while Bancho the Chef and God of War: Laufey have direct ties to existing games, both offer a distinctly new angle on their respective series.
Wolverine’s right: what he does really isn’t very nice
But he may still end being the best there is at what he does, which is “be the hero of a video game.” Insomniac Games is bringing their experience from a decade of making critically acclaimed Spider-man games to bear on Marvel’s Wolverine, so you can be sure it’ll play brilliantly. But very differently than Spider-man. From nimble, swinging neighborhood hero who plays by the rules to stubby little sometimes-secret agent whose hands end in murder... it’s going to be a much bloodier and nastier experience than the Spider-man saga. But it should play just as well while leaning into some of the more interesting beats of Claremont- and Hama-era X-Men and Wolverine comics: Reavers! Morlocks! If nothing else, can you imagine how cool the inevitable Spiral fight is going to be? They even figured out a way to potentially deny Wolverine the easy-win cheat of his unstoppable healing factor by including Leech, the mutant-power-sapping Morlock kid.