Summer Game Fest is later this week, but suddenly, Geoff Keighly’s Eternal Birthday has moved up a few days with a sudden stream by Sony. The June State of Play is now the kick-off to the rest of the weekend, so be sure to check back later this week when we cover the other shows starting on Friday, June 6th.
When Sony announced this State of Play earlier this week, I actually expected to see functionally nothing of interest at all. Sony has been in a bit of a weird spot (as has Xbox, frankly) as the gaming market seems to get further divided between Nintendo Switch or PC, with consoles becoming increasingly adjacent to the market; there really haven’t been many console exclusives, and even those that have existed have been almost entirely timed exclusives… unless you’re on the Switch.
So, color me surprised when the State of Play not only showed off quite a lot of potentially exciting upcoming games, but ended with a reveal of a game I didn’t even think would ever happen. If you missed the show, you can watch the entire stream here, or feel free to read on and check out each title and major announcement from the show below.
Lumines Arise
Developer: Q Entertainment
Release Date: Fall 2025
Platforms: PS5, PSVR2
Marcy: I will admit that the way the trailer for this started–as the very first thing of the show, even–made me a little trepidatious. My wife asked “is this AI?” and I had to think about that, because even though it was not, that didn’t bode well. Thankfully the actual game being revealed showed up and it was… Lumines! Lumines is an interesting puzzle game that first made some waves on Sony handhelds, having reactive music visualizer effects to compliment the puzzle gameplay and banging soundtrack. The visual upgrade here is nice, but what really matters is gameplay, and at the brief show of the game it seemed like Lumines quality puzzling remains mostly unchanged. They didn’t show much of how VR would interact, but frankly I don’t care, so I’m just happy to see more Lumines in general; at the very least I will add the OST to my Spotify and call it a day.
Romeo is a Dead Man
Developer: Grasshopper Manufacture
Release Date: 2026 (Maybe)
Platform: PS5, PC, Xbox
Marcy: Within 3 seconds of this trailer playing I simply said “Grasshopper Manufacture and Suda51”, and when I had gotten up to get water as the trailer was ending, my wife yelled “YOU WERE RIGHT” from the other room. Listen, there’s probably no bigger GM and Suda51 fan (and hater) than me; I’ve played every game they’ve ever made to completion, I own multiple copies of them, I consider Shadows of the Damned to be one of my top 10 games ever, and I even own a foam Lollipop Chainsaw prop. This is a lot of bragging to say that if you like GM and Suda51 games, you know what to expect. If you don’t, then here is the breakdown: Romeo is a Dead Man will be a character action game with grindhouse visuals and lots of style that will also likely have extremely frustrating gameplay segments and “jank” that like to prevent the game from being smooth and totally enjoyable. To his credit, Suda51 has stopped being quite such a crank, but you should really expect to go into these games with visual experience and aesthetics in mind. At least they were honest about the “2026. Maybe.”
Pragmata (For Real This Time)
Developer: Capcom
Release Date: 2026
Platforms: PS5, PC, Xbox
Pragmata is back! Did you miss it? No? That’s fair. A lot has happened since 2023, so you’d be forgiven for forgetting this new IP from Capcom after it fell into some sort of hole. At the show, the trailer started off with a generic “ad” for a company named Delphi that claims to use “generative ai” before things glitch out and the real game reveals itself. I suppose ai as a bad thing is not new, but I was at first apprehensive this was some sort of company commercial for real for some new GPU. Thankfully, it is instead a third person action game in which you pilot a man in a large mechanized suit, carrying a small girl named “Diana” on your back. There’s a lot more to Diana than we can see, as she seems to be some form of artificial lifeform; the combat in the game looks interesting, having your character meld melee attacks with Diana’s hacking and technological controls.
Silent Hill f
Developer: Konami
Release Date: September 25 2025
Platforms: PS5, PC, Xbox
Marcy: The third bit of drip marketing for Silent Hill f is here, this time with a trailer showing off what seemed to be actual gameplay from various points in the game while touching on some light story teasers. If you’re out of the loop, the new Silent Hill game takes place in Japan, specifically 1960s Japan, and has recruited renowned (and infamous) visual novel author Ryukishi07 to spin a new horror story. Ryukishi07’s work on Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni and Uminenko No Naku Koro Ni earned him fame for disturbing horror mysteries and metanarrative stories, so it will be interesting to see how, or if, any of that pedigree pays off; we do at least know that he’s always been a big Silent Hill fan, so that will maybe bode well. I have a few reservations, however, as Ryukishi07’s history of sexualizing girls is one of the parts of his works I’m not a fan of, and Silent Hill f has shown off multiple instances of the main character, Hinako, having her school uniform becoming increasingly tattered, torn, and removed as the game progresses.
That said, I think this game has a lot of promise. The visual style looks great, the graphics are certainly helping sell the sense of dread and haunting, murky worlds of Silent Hill, and the reimagining to Japan might do a lot of work to help break the endless hold Silent Hill 2 has on the franchise. We won’t have a lot longer to go to find out, either, as Silent Hill f releases on September 25th, barring any delays.
Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement
Developer: 505 Games
Release Date: 2026
Platforms: PS5, PC, Xbox
Marcy: The Bloodstained franchise has had somewhat of a rocky road to being a contender for the legacy of Castlevania, but in general the games released in the Bloodstained franchise have been pretty solid. This newest iteration looks to be promising more of the 2D planar Castlevania-style gameplay, but with one important twist: co-op. A big portion of this trailer showed off how two players can work together to storm the castle (not Dracula’s, of course), as well as various player abilities, classes, and customization. I’m always up for a good time with a quality Castlevania game, and the addition of co-op gives the game some new life that makes me curious to check it out. I am curious that it isn’t listed as a Switch 2 title, however, since it seems perfectly suited for it, but perhaps that will come later?
Digimon Story: Time Stranger
Developer: Bandai Namco
Release: October 3rd, 2025
Platforms: PS5, PC, Xbox
Marcy: Digimon has often struggled to break into it’s own in the post Pokemon domination of the “digital pet” gaming space, but one thing it does far, far better than Pokemon are one off games utilizing the Digimon universe or setting, and Time Stranger seems to be one of those games. Your character (A male or female avatar sporting a very retro-styled 70s era vibe garment) seems to be tasked with teaming up with Digimon to defeat a looming threat. The game looks quite stylish and I’m curious to see how the Digimon aspect of raising/levelling up your monsters works; this game has been in the works for almost a decade due to various delays, so it’s also going to be interesting to see if this game is set in the past mechanically and narratively, both figurative and literal.
Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles
Developer: SquareEnix
Release Date: September 30, 2025
Platforms: PS4/5, PC, Switch 1/2, Xbox Series X|S
Marcy: Final Fantasy Tactics is finally getting the updated semi-remake that SquareEnix has been providing to it’s titles, this time with the ability to play the game as it originally released, and a new ‘enhanced’ version that includes voice acting for the first time. There isn’t much else being touted in the enhanced version other than voice acting and smoother graphics, but Final Fantasy Tactics is almost perfect on it’s own, so it isn’t really like it needs a lot of changes or updates. What is most interesting to me is that so far this is the only ‘universal’ game shown in the State of Play; while I would expect to see more generalized announcements and news in other platforms, it is interesting to me how many games on this list that seem like slam dunk cross platform games with the Switch are notably absent…
Baby Steps
Developer: Devolver Digital
Release Date: September 8th, 2025
Platforms: PS5 and Steam
Marcy: In what looks like a very silly game that’s worth playing once and then perhaps watching other people attempt to play, Baby Steps arrives later this year. In it, players are tasked with the difficult act of walking. As Nathan, described as a “failson”, the game asks players to put one foot in front of the other, literally, as you explore the world around you. As with most Devolver Digital games, it looks stylized and silly, and likely worth a play for the experience and then little else. Maybe. Sometimes they surprise you!
Hirogami
Developer: Bandai Namco
Release Date: September 3rd, 2025
Platforms: PS5 and PC
Marcy: An action-platformer using origami as the aesthetic flavoring and backdrop, Hirogami announced a PS5 version today as well as a release date. The game looks quite stylish, although how much depth there is and what else there is to it other than what we were shown remains to be seen. At the very least, it seems to have some interesting and fun ideas about how to take the origami theme beyond very simplistic designs.
Everybody’s Golf Hot Shots
Developer: HYDE inc and Bandai Namco
Release Date: 2025
Platforms: PS5, Switch, PC
Marcy: A somewhat classic franchise is getting a new updated version; this isn’t a new announcement, but mostly served as a reminder that this new version of Everybody’s Golf is on the way later this year. Also, Pacman is in this one as a cameo, which is not surprising considering that Bandai Namco is publishing it. If you like arcade style golf games that you can play with your friends, Everybody’s Golf is back to give you a fun time on the green; if not, well, just ignore it.
Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound
Developer: The Game Kitchen
Release Date: July 31st, 2025
Platforms: PS5/4, Switch, Xbox X/S, PC
Marcy: From the developers behind the Blasphemous games comes a new 2D Ninja Gaiden game. Perhaps the biggest two things that I noticed in this trailer was the co-op and the music, which featured returning musicians from the original Ninja Gaiden games and reimagines the hits from previous games. Otherwise, it looks kind of… not like Ninja Gaiden, actually, in my opinion; the enemies are huge and take up a lot of space and the stages seemed oddly claustrophobic in the trailer. I’m still curious to check it out; while the modern Ninja Gaiden games have been fun for their unique spin on punishing difficulty, I grew up with the originals and I’d love to see a new attempt at them.
CAIRN
Developer: Game Bakers
Release Date: October 2nd, 2025
Platforms: PS5, PC, Xbox X/S
Marcy: Described as a “survival-climber”, CAIRN tasks players with climbing mountains, a pretty perilous action in the real-world that seems to be even more potentially dangerous in this fantastical videogame version. A demo of the game was announced during the State of Play for PS5 users, but the demo is also available on Steam too if you really want to check it out.
Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection
Developer: Digital Eclipse
Release Date: 2025
Platforms: PS5, PC, Switch, Xbox
Marcy: As part of the trend of selling collections of updated retro games as “archival” projects (that are digital, meaning you don’t actually own them) comes the newest one in the line by Digital Eclipse: Mortal Kombat! Personal feelings about this trend aside, this is a cool looking collection that promises to include not just the mainline Mortal Kombat games but also handheld versions as well. I’m notably cynical about these types of collections and what they are trying to sell, but also not going to lie that there’s a lot of fun to be had here if the price is right; I’m also curious if they’ll include spin off games like Shaolin Monks.
Metal Gear Solid Delta
Developer: Konami
Release Date: August 8th, 2025
Platforms: PS5, PC, Xbox
Marcy: An updated version of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Metal Gear Solid Delta looks to provide the amazing experience of Snake Eater with some upscaled graphics and modern tweaks. However, this trailer really cemented that this is not a remake but an update/upscale; a lot of the gameplay looks notably awkward and clunky in the specific way that Metal Gear Solid games always were, and previous releases about Delta noted that there are no new voice recordings or casting changes. That’s fine in theory, but if you were hoping for some grand new project, just remember that Konami bounced Kojima out to live his best life ever while they spun their wheels, and Delta is mostly just cashing in on the license they still own for one of gaming’s most revered titles. That’s not meant to be a (direct) judgement, just stating. Also, it seems like Delta (at least on Playstation?) will include the Ape Escape collaboration and possibly more, like Metal Gear Online.
Nioh 3
Developer: Team Ninja
Release Date: 2026
Platforms: PS5, PC
Marcy: A somewhat surprise announcement today and one of the (so far) only semi-exclusives, Nioh 3 from Team Ninja showed off a new protagonist and inclusion of “ninja” combat techniques and abilities to compliment the “samurai” styles of the previous games. The new protagonist is none other than Tokugawa Takechiyo, otherwise more widely known as Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first Shogun of the Tokugawa Shogunate (he also serves as the inspiration of the Shogun from the novel and FX novel). Nioh is historical fiction, if you weren’t aware, although it certainly takes a lot of creative license with the supernatural elements. I’m mostly interested in the combat; Nioh 1 and 2 were great action games with scaling difficulty and lots of challenge, and Wo-Long, while not in this trilogy, was another Team Ninja game inbetween here that was similarly great. If you have a PS5, there’s a demo available now.
Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow
Developer: EIDOS
Release Date: 2025
Platforms: PSVR2, Steam VR, Quest 2/3
Marcy: I… Listen, I don’t like VR. I’ve tried it, and aside from it always tending to make me feel ill and disoriented, I’ve just never found anything fun or interesting about VR gaming that makes me get excited when something is announced as a VR title. So, while I’d love to be excited for a new Thief game, I… can’t pretend that I am. If you like VR, and like Thief, then you’ve got something to look forward to.
Ghost of Yotei… State of Play Announcement (-_-)
Developer: Sucker Punch
Release Date: October 2nd, 2025
Platforms: PS5, Possibly PC Later(?)
Marcy: That’s literally the trailer; watch the show in July, I guess.
Tides of Tomorrow
Developer: DigixArt
Release Date: February 24, 2026
Platforms: PS5, PC, Xbox
Marcy: I dismissed this game outright as “streamer slop” once it focused on a fake multiplayer username, and while that sounds harsh, there really doesn’t seem to be much else to say about the game. You play as a “Tidewalker” who can see the paths other Tidewalkers have taken, and use that information to inform your own decisions as you try to solve whatever dystopian waterworld problem the game is asking you to face. It smacks of being very much a game you’d play perhaps once or twice, if even that; and frankly, it would depend on whether or not the game has “actual” choices or “Bioshock Infinite” choices. Perhaps the game is more your speed than mine, though, so keep an eye on it if it seems like something you’d enjoy; it releases next year.
Astro Bot is Back Again
Developer: Team ASOBI
Release Date: July 2025
Platforms: PS5
Marcy: The Playstation 5’s sole video game Astro Bot is back with another free update, bringing the total number of worlds to 90 and also delivering some new special bots, with the only shown being a reference to Ghost of Yotei protagonist Atsu. They stated the rest are secrets, but considering how popular Astro Bot has been, I’m sure people are happy to go find the secrets in this charming little platformer.
Sea of Remnants
Developer: Joker Studio (NetEase)
Release Date: 2026
Platforms: PS5, PC
Marcy: I have to admit that Sea Remnants was one of the more baffling trailers at the show, because it was hard to discern what the actual game was. I first considered that it was a sequel to Sea of Thieves or some sort of update, but then it introduced a town and stealth system, while also showing off what seemed to be RPG style combat. Once I saw that NetEase was the publisher, though, it made more sense, and the blogpost from Sony about the game put things into more perspective: This is a turn-based RPG set in a semi-Age of Exploration setting using visuals of wooden puppets and a punk-art style that is reminiscent of Arcane and NetEase’s game Identity V. The mention of multiplayer means that this will likely play something like Genshin Impact or Wuthering Waves, or even Honkai Star Rail, depending on how prevalent the RPG combat is. There is mention of multiplayer too, so I feel like this is the type of game that wows with a great visual trailer and disappoints with a thousand cuts as how it actually plays is revealed, but I’ll remain optimistic.
Sword of the Sea and Game Catalogue Update
Developer: Giant Squid, Various (Catalogue)
Release Date: August 19, 2025
Platforms: PS5 Game Catalogue
Marcy: I joked to Rob in Discord that this was basically Journey…. 2!!! With the Peggle Gif and everything but honestly, it really is… Journey 2. It basically seems to be Journey but Just Surfing, which is fine, and maybe even fun, but I don’t know if I was either hoping for more or disappointed to see Journey’s unique and kind of poignant experience being retreaded without much of the same emotional impact.
As for the Catalogue itself, we also learned that Resident Evil 2 and 3, as well as Twisted Metal, would be joining the PS5 catalogue update soon, as well as FBC Firebreak, if any of those enticed you to try it out.
007 First Light
Developer: IO Interactive
Release Date: 2026
Platforms: PS5, PC, Switch 2, Xbox X/S
Marcy: Okay, probably unsurprising hot take: I do not find 007 / James Bond very interesting, and so I did not find this trailer very interesting. Hyper Straight Cis Man Power Fantasy is not exactly my brand, if you were unaware, but this trailer also had “is this a game or a movie, or a game trying to be a movie” syndrome as well; there was no gameplay shown and just endless “cool” cutscenes. There will apparently be more revealed later this Summer about the game itself, so I’ll withhold my entire disdain for it until then. That said, IO Interactive has a decent track record with me and Hitman, so I’m hopeful.
BUT ENOUGH OF THAT SHIT, BECAUSE IT’S MARVEL, BABY!!!!!!
Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls
Developer: ArcSys
Release Date: 2026
Platforms: PS5, PC (Rip Xbox)
Marcy: LET’S FUCKING GO BABY, NO LONGER MUST YOU ASK WHEN IS MARVEL, BECAUSE THE ANSWER IS 2026!!!!!
Ahem.
The surprise closing announcement of today’s State of Play was the shocking and well guarded secret that Marvel is returning to the 2D fighting game world next year in the hands of ArcSys, the amazing fighting game developers behind Guilty Gear and Dragon Ball Z Fighters. Promising a 4v4 (!!) system, the roster showed some expected Marvel staples (Captain America, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Storm, Doctor Doom) with new faces, such as Kamala Khan and Ghost Rider.
The gameplay shown off already looks great, and frankly I’m 100% on board. To say that the energy in my living room was not electric as my wife and I both shouted IT’S FUCKING MARVEL BABY and our social media feeds lit up was all the proof I really needed to know that this was a big deal and it’s now solely on ArcSys to deliver and not fumble.
More updates are promised to come as the release is a while away, but I would absolutely expect to see and hear more about this from EVO in August.
Wrap-Up
Marcy: Frankly, I can’t believe how surprised I was by today’s State of Play. I had earlier said in the day that I may not even have had to write a round-up because there was unlikely to be anything interesting, and here I am eating crow (happily) an hour later. If anything, I think this shows that there are a lot of great games coming down the pipeline, but it does raise a few questions as to what we’ll see over the course of the rest of this weekend at Summer Games Fest, but also how the console market will shape up.
There really wasn’t anything in this show that is exclusively on Playstation, as most games are PS5 and PC at least, with most of them being PS5, PC, and Xbox. The actually surprising part is how few of these games are available on the Switch 2, which is currently undergoing a sort of rocky start after the high price tag and other issues with it’s launch. If the Switch is suddenly going to start being absent from even “lower” powered games, then what exactly is the point of the supposed increase in Switch 2 power? And without more reasons to own a specific console over a pretty midmarket PC, why even bother having a console?
I’m not sure if these questions will be answered this weekend, but I will certainly be looking towards the rest of this week’s shows to see if I can find an answer to if I finally need an actual PS5 in my house, or just buy myself a new GPU. I think I already know the answer, but I like to be wrong sometimes, as a treat.
See you Friday for Geoff Keighly’s Birthday: Day 1!
