Sony’s first PlayStation VR for the PlayStation 4 hit stores at the right price at the right time and ended up being one of VR’s biggest hits. The PlayStation 5’s PlayStation VR2? Not so much, unfortunately. In either an effort to clear unsold inventory, an attempt to revitalize the platform, or both, Sony has announced it’s dropping the price of the headset significantly.
Starting in March, the main SKU of the headset will drop from $550 to $400 in the US. Europe, the UK, and Japan will also see price cuts to 550 euros, 400 pounds, and 66,980 yen, respectively, as detailed on the PlayStation Blog. Strangely, the bundle that includes the game Horizon: Call of the Mountain (originally $600) will also drop to the same exact price. That’s welcome, but it’s also a little bit difficult not to interpret that as a sign that this is an attempt to empty inventory more than anything else.
The headset launched in early 2023 but has suffered from weak software support ever since—a far cry from the first PSVR, which had one of the strongest libraries of its time. It didn’t help that unlike the regular PlayStation 5, the PSVR2 was not backward-compatible with games released for its predecessor.
About a year ago, there were reports that Sony was temporarily pausing production because it wasn’t able to move the inventory it already had. Later, the company released an adapter and some software for getting it running on PCs. That made it one of the most attractive PC VR headsets, at least on paper. However, setup was clunky, and some features that were supported on the PS5 weren’t supported on PC.
PSVR2 games are still getting announced and released, but the VR market in general has slowed down quite a bit in recent years, and most of the remaining action (such as it is) is on Meta’s Quest platform.
Sony’s game publishing arm has done a 180-degree turn on a controversial policy of requiring PC players to sign in with PlayStation accounts for some games, according to a blog post by the company.
A PlayStation account will “become optional” for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, God of War Ragnarok, The Last of Us Part II Remastered, and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered. Sony hasn’t lost hope that players will still go ahead and use a PlayStation account, though, as it’s tying several benefits to signing in.
Logging in with PlayStation will be required to access trophies, the PlayStation equivalent of achievements. (Steam achievements appear to be supported regardless.) It will also allow friend management, provided you have social contacts on the PlayStation Network.
Additionally, Sony is providing some small in-game rewards to each title that are available if you log in with its account system. You’ll get early unlocks of the Spider-Man 2099 Black Suit and the Miles Morales 2099 Suit in Spider-Man 2, for example—or the Nora Valiant outfit in Horizon: Zero Dawn.
Some of these rewards are available via other means within the games, such as the Armor of the Black Bear set for Kratos in Ragnarok.
Retro game enthusiasts may already be acquainted with Analogue, a company that designs and manufactures updated versions of classic consoles that can play original games but also be hooked up to modern televisions and monitors. The most recent of its announcements is the Analogue 3D, a console designed to play Nintendo 64 cartridges.
Now, a company called Retro Remake is reigniting the console wars of the 1990s with its SuperStation one, a new-old game console designed to play original Sony PlayStation games and work with original accessories like controllers and memory cards. Currently available as a $180 pre-order, Retro Remake expects the consoles to ship no later than Q4 of 2025.
The base console is modeled on the redesigned PSOne console from mid-2000, released late in the console’s lifecycle to appeal to buyers on a budget who couldn’t afford a then-new PlayStation 2. The Superstation one includes two PlayStation controller ports and memory card slots on the front, plus a USB-A port. But there are lots of modern amenities on the back, including a USB-C port for power, two USB-A ports, an HDMI port for new TVs, DIN10 and VGA ports that support analog video output, and an Ethernet port. Other analog video outputs, including component and RCA outputs, are located on the sides behind small covers. The console also supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
PlayStation 5 owners are reporting advertisements on the device’s home screen. Frustratingly, the ads seem to be rather difficult to disable, and some are also outdated ads and/or confusing content.
The ads, visible on users’ home screens when they hover over a game title, can only be removed if you disconnect from the Internet, IGN reported today. However, that would block a lot of the console’s functionality. The PS5 dashboard previously had ads but not on the home screen.
Before this recent development, people would see game art if they hovered over a game icon on the PS5’s home screen. Now, doing so reportedly brings up dated advertisements. For example, IGN reported seeing an ad for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse “coming soon exclusively in cinemas” when hovering over the Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales game. Webheads will of course recall that the Spider-Verse movie came out in June 2023.
Similarly, going to NBA 2K25 reportedly shows an ad for gaining early access. But the game came out early this month.
Per IGN, it seems that the console is “pulling in the latest news for each game, whether it be a YouTube video, patch notes, or even the announcement of a different game entirely.” That means that not all games are showing advertisements. Instead, some show an image for a YouTube video about the game or a note about patch notes or updates for the game.
There also seem to be some mix-ups, with MP1st reporting seeing an ad for the LEGO Horizon Adventures game when hovering over the icon for Horizon Zero Dawn. The publication wrote: “The ad also make[s it] confusing a bit, as… it looks like you’re playing LEGO Horizon Adventures and not the actual Horizon game we’re on.”
Some games, like Astro Bot, however, don’t seem to be affected by the changes, per IGN.
Annoyed and confused
Gamers noticing the change have taken to the web to share their annoyance, disappointment, and, at times, confusion about the content suddenly forced into the PS5’s home screen.
“As someone playing through the Spiderman series now, this confused the hell out of me,” Crack_an_ag said via Reddit.
Others are urging Sony to either remove the feature or fix it so that it can be helpful, while others argue that the feature couldn’t be helpful regardless.
“Forcing every single game to make its latest news story its dashboard art is SO stupid as no one game uses the news feature consistently,” Reddit user jackcos wrote.
Sam88FPS, meanwhile, noted that ads drove them from Xbox to PlayStation:
One of the main reasons I moved away from Xbox was the fact they started to build the Xbox UI around ads and pushing [Game Pass]. Hopefully Sony listens more because Xbox absolutely refused to, in fact, they even added full screen startup ads lmao.
It’s unclear what exactly prompted this change. Some suspect it’s related to firmware update 24.06-10.00.00. But that update came out on September 12, and, as IGN noted, its patch notes don’t say anything about this. Considering the obvious problems and mix of content being populated, it’s possible that Sony is working out some kinks and that eventually the content shown on users’ home screens will become more relevant or consistent. The change has also come a few days after a developer claimed that Sony lost $400 million after pulling the Concord online game after just two weeks, prompting digs at Sony and unconfirmed theories that Sony is trying to make up for financial losses with ads.
Ars Technica has reached out to Sony about why it decided to add non-removable ads to the PS5 home screen and about the outdated and otherwise perplexing content being displayed. We’ll let you know if we hear back.
The new PS5 packaging, as seen on the PlayStation Direct online store, is missing the “8K” label in the corner.
The original PS5 packaging with the 8K label, as still seen on the GameStop website.
When we first received our PlayStation 5 review unit from Sony in 2020, we reacted with some bemusement to the “8K” logo on the box and its implied promise of full 7630×4320 resolution output. We then promptly forgot all about it since native 8K content and 8K compatible TVs have remained a relative curiosity thus far in the PS5’s lifespan.
But on Wednesday, Digital Foundry’s John Linneman discovered that Sony has quietly removed that longstanding 8K label from the PS5 box. The ultra-high-resolution promise no longer appears on the packaging shown on Sony’s official PlayStation Direct store, a change that appears to have happened between late January and mid-February, according to Internet Archive captures of the store page (the old “8K” box can still be seen at other online retailers, though).
A promise deferred
This packaging change has been a long time coming since the PS5 hasn’t technically been living up to its 8K promise for years now. While Sony’s Mark Cerny mentioned the then-upcoming hardware’s 8K support in a 2019 interview, the system eventually launched with a pretty big “coming soon” caveat for that feature. “PS5 is compatible with 8K displays at launch, and after a future system software update will be able to output resolutions up to 8K when content is available, with supported software,” the company said in an FAQ surrounding the console’s 2020 launch.
Well over three years later, that 8K-enabling software update has yet to appear, meaning the console’s technical ability to push 8K graphics is still a practical impossibility for users. Until Sony’s long-promised software patch hits, even PS5 games that render frames internally at a full 8K resolution are still pushing out a downscaled 4K framebuffer through that HDMI 2.1 cable.
Enlarge/ A slide from TV manufacturer TCL guesses at some details for the next micro-generation of high-end game consoles.
At this point, though, there’s some reason to expect that the promised patch may never come to the standard PS5. At the moment, the ever-churning rumor mill is expecting an impending mid-generation PS5 Pro upgrade that could offer true, native 8K resolution support right out of the box. If that comes to pass, removing the outdated “8K” promise from the original PS5 packaging could be a subtle way to highlight the additional power of the upcoming “Pro” upgrade.
Enlarge/ A slight majority of participants in a double-blind study saw no discernible difference between a 4K and 8K image video clips.
So will console gamers be missing out if they don’t upgrade to an 8K-compatible display? Probably not, as studies show extremely diminishing returns in the perceived quality jump from 4K to 8K visual content for most users and living room setups. Unless you are sitting extremely close to an extremely large display, it’s pretty unlikely you’ll even be able to tell the difference.
Enlarge/ After nearly four years of the PS5, a lot of people are still using their old PS4s.
If you’re still getting use out of your aging PS4 after nearly four full years of PS5 availability, new data from Sony shows you are far from alone. The Japanese electronics giant says that both the PS4 and PS5 currently have about 49 million monthly active users, suggesting a significant number of PlayStation players have yet to spend $400 or more to upgrade to the newer console.
Despite the parity in active consoles, Sony also points out that the PS5 is responsible for significantly more gameplay hours than the PS4: 2.4 billion for the new system compared to 1.4 billion for its predecessor (it’s unclear what time period this comparison covers). Sony’s monthly user numbers also include any console “used to play games or [access] services on the PlayStation Network,” so an old PS4 that serves as a convenient Netflix box in the spare bedroom would still inflate the older system’s numbers here.
Still, it’s pretty impressive that nearly 50 million people are still regularly using a console first launched in 2013 (even considering 2016’s Pro upgrade). That could be in part because the PS4 is still seeing plenty of software support well after the PS5’s release; Sony’s PSN Store listings currently include 189 “just released” PS4-compatible games, including many “best-selling” titles that don’t require a PS5 at all. The fact that those PS4-compatible titles are also playable directly on the PS5 has probably helped convince some publishers to target the older console for their less graphics-intensive games.
Enlarge/ PS5 owners are spending less money on full games and a lot more money on “add-on content.”
The PS4’s longevity doesn’t seem to have had a significant negative impact on the PS5’s bottom line, either. Sony’s gaming division has already earned $10 billion in profit off of $106 billion in sales across the nearly four years of the PS5 generation, compared to $9 billion in profit off $107 billion in sales across seven years of the PS4.
PS5 owners have spent an average of $731 each across games, services, peripherals, and add-on content. That’s up significantly from $580 in nominal spending from the average PS4 owner at the same point in that console’s life cycle, though what sounds like a big increase is actually pretty flat when you take inflation into account.
That per-console gaming spending is now concentrated less on “full game” purchases—which are down 12 percent between the PS4 to PS5 generation—and much more on so-called add-on content—which is up 176 percent between generations. We’re guessing that big-spending, loot-box-chasing “whales” have something to do with that increase.
So far, this is nothing out of the ordinary. But near the bottom of the boilerplate, the listing notes that “this title has been converted from the PlayStation 2 version to the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 consoles and provides newly added features [emphasis added].” That’s a marked difference from earlier “PS2 on PS4” downloadable releases, which only say that they were “converted from the original PlayStation 2 version to the PS4 system.”
A new emulator for a new generation
Previous PS2 games released as PlayStation Classics could be played on the PS5 via the newer system’s PS4 backward compatibility, of course. And those titles already looked relatively decent on modern displays thanks to near-HD upscaling at solid frame rates. But new “up-rendering” designed for the 4K-capable PS5 could make these aging 3D titles look even better on high-end TVs, even if low-resolution textures originally designed for 2000s-era CRTs may still look dated. And other new features like “rewind, quick save, and custom video filters” promise nice improvements over the relatively bare-bones PS2 emulation previously available on the PS4.
A look at Implicit Creations’ existing PS1 emulation efforts on the PS5.
Implicit Conversions recently included the PS2 on a list of consoles supported by the Syrup Engine and said on LinkedIn that it is “working with clients to bring NES, PS1, PSP, and PS2 games to the PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox [emphasis added].” In a March interview with Time Extension, the company said it “can’t deny or confirm anything about PS2 [emulation on PS5],” but the very familiar wording of this leaked Clone Wars listing certainly suggests the same company is behind this new PS2 porting effort as well.
Of course, the ability to download select PS2 games to the PS5 falls well short of many players’ dream of simply inserting and playing an existing PS2 disc on their newest Sony console. In 2018, though, hackers opened up the PlayStation Classics emulator and got it running generic PS2 games on the PS4 (compatibility is a bit hit or miss, however). That same emulator has also proven useful in helping hackers unlock some interesting exploits on the PS5. So who knows—the community may be able to hack-in wider PS5 support for PS2 game discs eventually.
Enlarge/ This gear is from the upcoming “Polar Patriots” Premium Warbond in Helldivers 2. It’s an upcoming change the developer and publisher likely wish was getting more attention of late.
Sony Interactive Entertainment
There’s a lot of stories about the modern PC gaming industry balled up inside one recent “update” to Helldivers 2.
Sony Interactive Entertainment announced Thursday night that current players of the runaway hit co-op shooter will have to connect their Steam accounts to a PlayStation Network (PSN) account starting on May 30, with a hard deadline of June 4. New players will be required to connect the two starting Monday, May 6.
Officially, this is happening because of the “safety and security provided on PlayStation and PlayStation Studios games.” Account linking allows Sony to ban abusive players, and also gives banned players the right to appeal. Sony writes that it would have done this at launch, but “Due to technical issues … we allowed the linking requirements for Steam accounts to a PlayStation Network account to be temporarily optional. That grace period will now expire.”
“We understand that while this may be an inconvenience to some of you, this step will help us to continue to build a community that you are all proud to be a part of,” Sony writes in the update. The Helldivers community on Reddit is flush with dissenting posts today, and Steam reviews of the game have taken a marked turn since the announcement.
Sony Interactive Entertainment
Oh, right, that PlayStation Network
It’s the combination of “safety and security” and “Sony” that make this more than just the typical grousing about game launchers, cross-play, or other user/password demands. The PlayStation Network was fully and famously hacked in April 2011, with 77 million users’ names, addresses, emails, birthdays, passwords, and logins compromised. Sony Online Entertainment also suffered a separate attack while PSN was down, exposing millions more accounts and thousands of credit card numbers. PSN came partially back online 26 days later, then fully online two weeks later, with a complimentary year of identity protection and Welcome Back packages for subscribers. Less than a month later, other aspects of Sony were hacked by LulzSec.
Those with a long enough memory of computers, security, and Sony might also recall the Sony rootkit debacle, which, while nearly 20 years old now, was such a notably bad and bizarre thing that it stuck around.
Sony Interactive Entertainment
An online game people want less online
Helldivers 2 was not supposed to be this big a game. Sony was still cautiously trodding into PC games after years of treating its exclusive and first-party games as console leverage. Helldivers 2 was a sequel to a game that, while well-regarded, didn’t land as a smash hit.
That success hurts the optics of Sony’s demand, months after it had an unexpected hit, that players must now register with its far-from-trusted network to keep playing. A non-mega-budgeted game, a trial-balloon sequel, hits big, and Sony, finding its footing in this new realm, doesn’t want to leave said opportunity as a one-time Steam purchase.
Sony Interactive Entertainment
Two blimps jousting overhead
Helldivers 2 is explicitly multiplayer, and the action takes place on Sony’s servers. But Steam is the means by which Helldivers 2 reaches its players, fosters engagement, and, of course, tries to entice them into DLC, further sequels, and perhaps other Sony PC games—so long as they’re on also on Steam.
There are no rock-solid numbers on Steam’s PC gaming market share, but we know that the biggest competitor, Epic Games, is losing hundreds of millions of dollars each year giving away games just to get some kind of foothold. Steam’s market position, recommendation whims, and broad 30 percent revenue cut have left many companies searching for ways to disentangle their futures from a single platform. Sony just happens to be the one making the hard ask, for reasons that don’t entirely sound obvious months later, and with a network that has some tough Google search results.
It’s worth noting that PSN is not necessarily available in all countries where Steam sells games. We’ve reached out to Sony to ask about this and for further comment on their PSN requirement, and will update this post if we hear back.
Enlarge/ Scale is important, especially when talking about relative console sales.
Aurich Lawson | Getty Images
Yesterday, Microsoft announced that it made 31 percent less off Xbox hardware in the first quarter of 2024 (ending in March) than it had the year before, a decrease it says was “driven by lower volume of consoles sold.” And that’s not because the console sold particularly well a year ago, either; Xbox hardware revenue for the first calendar quarter of 2023 was already down 30 percent from the previous year.
Those two data points speak to a console that is struggling to substantially increase its player base during a period that should, historically, be its strongest sales period. But getting wider context on those numbers is a bit difficult because of how Microsoft reports its Xbox sales numbers (i.e., only in terms of quarterly changes in total console hardware revenue). Comparing those annual shifts to the unit sales numbers that Nintendo and Sony report every quarter is not exactly simple.
Context clues
Enlarge/ Significant declines in Xbox hardware revenue for four of the last five quarters stand out relative to competitors’ unit sales.
Kyle Orland
To attempt some direct contextual comparison, we took unit sales numbers for some recent successful Sony and Nintendo consoles and converted them to Microsoft-style year-over-year percentage changes (aligned with the launch date for each console). For this analysis, we skipped over each console’s launch quarter, which contains less than three months of total sales (and often includes a lot of pent-up early adopter demand). We also skipped the first four quarters of a console’s life cycle, which don’t have a year-over-year comparison point from 12 months prior.
This still isn’t a perfect comparison. Unit sales don’t map directly to total hardware revenue due to things like inflation, remainder sales of Xbox One hardware, and price cuts/discounts (though the Xbox Series S/X, PS5, and Switch still have yet to see official price drops). It also doesn’t take into account the baseline sales levels from each console’s first year of sales, making total lifetime sales performance on the Xbox side hard to gauge (though recent data from a Take-Two investment call suggests the Xbox Series S/X has been heavily outsold by the PS5, at this point).
Even with all those caveats, the comparative data trends are pretty clear. At the start of their fourth full year on the market, recent successful consoles have been enjoying a general upswing in their year-over-year sales. Microsoft stands out as a major outlier, making less revenue from Xbox hardware in four of the last five quarters on a year-over-year basis.
Those numbers suggest that the hardware sales rate for the Xbox Series S/X may have already peaked in the last year or two. That would be historically early for a console of this type; previous Ars analyses have shown PlayStation consoles generally see their sales peaks in their fourth or fifth year of life, and Nintendo portables have shown a similar sales trend, historically. The Xbox Series S/X progression, on the other hand, looks more similar to that of the Wii U, which was already deep in a “death spiral” at a similar point in its commercial life.
This is not the end
In the past, console sales trends like these would have been the sign of a hardware maker’s wider struggles to stay afloat in the gaming business. However, in today’s gaming market, Microsoft is in a place where console sales are not strictly required for overall success.
For instance, Microsoft’s total gaming revenue for the latest reported quarter was up 51 percent, thanks in large part to the “net impact from the Activision Blizzard acquisition.” Even before that (very expensive) merger was completed, Microsoft’s total gaming revenue was often partially buoyed by “growth in Game Pass” and strong “software content” sales across PC and other platforms.
Enlarge/ Owning Call of Duty means being one of the biggest PS5 game publishers almost by definition.
So, while the commercial future of Xbox hardware may look a bit uncertain, the future of Microsoft’s overall gaming business is in much less dire straits. That would be true even if Microsoft’s Xbox hardware revenue fell by 100 percent.
It looks like Sony’s PlayStation VR2 is not living up to the company’s sales expectations just over a year after it first hit the market. Bloomberg reports that the PlayStation-maker has stopped producing new PSVR2 units as it tries to clear out a growing backlog of unsold inventory.
Bloomberg cites “people familiar with [Sony’s] plans” in reporting that PSVR2 sales have “slowed progressively” since its February 2023 launch. Sony has produced “well over 2 million” units of the headset, compared to what tracking firm IDC estimates as just 1.69 million unit shipments to retailers through the end of last year. The discrepancy has caused a “surplus of assembled devices… throughout Sony’s supply chain,” according to Bloomberg’s sources.
IDC estimates a quarterly low of 325,000 PSVR2 units shipped in the usually hot holiday season, compared to a full 1.3 million estimated holiday shipments for Meta’s then-new Quest 3 headset, which combined with other Quest products to account for over 3.7 million estimated sales for the full year.
In the intervening years, though, the VR headset market has almost completely migrated to untethered headsets, which allow for freer movement and eliminate the need to purchase and stay near external hardware. The $550 PlayStation VR2 is also pricier than the $500 Meta Quest 3 headset, even before you add in the $500 asking price for a needed PS5. Sony’s new headset also isn’t backward compatible with games designed for the original PSVR, forcing potential upgraders to abandon most of their existing VR game libraries for the new platform.
Even before the PSVR2 launched, Sony was reportedly scaling back its ambitions for the headset (though the company denied those reports at the time and said it was “seeing enthusiasm from PlayStation fans”). And since its launch, PSVR2 has suffered from a lack of exclusive titles, featuring a lineup mostly composed of warmed-over ports long available on other headsets. An Inverse report from late last year shared a series of damning complaints from developers who have struggled to get their games to run well on the new hardware.
Put it all together, and PSVR2 seems like a too-little-too-late upgrade that has largely squandered the company’s early lead in the space. We wouldn’t be shocked if this spells the end of the line for Sony’s VR hardware plans and for mass-market tethered headsets in general.
While Microsoft hasn’t directly commented on these reports, Xbox chief Phil Spencer wrote on social media that Microsoft is “planning a business update event for next week, where we look forward to sharing more details with you about our vision for the future of Xbox.”
The churning rumor mill has set off something of an existential crisis among some Xbox superfans, content creators, and influencers, who are worried that Microsoft is planning to essentially abandon their favored console. “Genuinely feel terrible for convincing my sister to get an Xbox instead of a PS5,” XboxYoda posted in a representative social media take. “Like I actually feel like I let her down… .”
“If you like being lied to that’s a you thing,” social media user XcloudTimdog posted. “I have a set of standards, that’s all. Cross them and, well, I respond.”
These and other more apocalyptic reactions might seem like hyperbolic whining from territorial console misanthropes. But they also have the germ of a point. Exclusive games have long been the primary way console makers argue for players to choose their console over the competition. If Microsoft effectively changes that argument in the middle of the current console generation, Xbox owners will have some legitimate reason to be upset.
A world without Xbox exclusives
To see why, start with a simple thought experiment. Say it’s early 2020 and Microsoft announces that it is abandoning the idea of console exclusives entirely. Upcoming Xbox Game Studios titles like Halo Infinite and Starfield would still be released on the upcoming Xbox Series X/S, of course, but they’d also all see equivalent versions launch on the PS5 (and sometimes the Switch) on the same day. Sony does not respond in kind and keeps major franchises like God of War and Spider-Man exclusive to the PS5.
Enlarge/ You mean I could have visited this planet and played Spider-Man 2 on the same console?
In this hypothetical world, convincing someone to buy an Xbox becomes much more difficult. On the one hand, you have a PlayStation console that can play all of the major big-budget games published by both Microsoft and Sony. On the other, you have an Xbox that doesn’t have access to the significant Sony half of that gaming equation.
There are other reasons you might still consider an Xbox in this world. Maybe you think the reduced price of the Xbox Series S delivers more “bang for the buck.” Maybe you prefer the Xbox controller layout or some of Xbox’s system-level OS features. Maybe you’re convinced cross-platform games will look or play better on Microsoft’s machine.
But in the console market, these kinds of concerns often take a back seat to the prospect of a system’s exclusive games and franchises. The biggest exclusive titles are called “system sellers” for a reason—they’re the games that make many gamers plunk down hundreds of dollars on hardware just for the possibility of spending more on this must-have software.
In this hypothetical, Microsoft would essentially be trying to sell the Xbox without any exclusive system sellers.
Enlarge/ An officially released image for Insomniac Games’ upcoming game Wolverine.
Acclaimed Sony-owned game development studio Insomniac Games became the victim of a large-scale ransomware attack this week, as initially reported by Cyber Daily. Ransomware group Rhysida dumped 1.67TB of data, including assets and story spoilers from unreleased games, a road map of upcoming titles, internal company communications, employees’ personal data such as passport scans and compensation figures, and much more.
The gang said it chose Insomniac because, as a large and successful studio, it made an attractive target for a money grab. The ransom was $2 million, and Insomniac refused to pay it.
As a result, a trove of emails, Slack messages, slideshow presentations, and more hit the web. Notably, these included screenshots and assets from the studio’s upcoming Wolverine game, as well as confirmation that Wolverine is planned to be the first in a trilogy of games starring X-Men characters. The materials also revealed that the company is working on another Ratchet & Clank game and a new Spider-Man sequel.
Rhysida put some of the data up for bidding by parties other than Insomniac itself, and some was sold.
Insomniac Games has an impressive history of top-selling games, particularly on PlayStation consoles. It became a household name with the Spyro the Dragon series on the first PlayStation. It went on to create and shepherd the Ratchet & Clank series on PlayStation 2, and it released several more Ratchet & Clank games on PlayStation 3, alongside a first-person shooter series dubbed Resistance.
More recently, the studio has released new Ratchet & Clank games on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 and three critically acclaimed games based on Marvel’s Spider-Man. It also dabbled in VR development on the Oculus platform and released an Xbox exclusive called Sunset Overdrive before it was acquired by Sony to become a first-party PlayStation studio in August 2019.
As one of the industry’s most accomplished and successful developers, it has an enormous audience of fans who will likely avail themselves of the leaked information about upcoming titles. The leaks also expose internal company information that may be of interest to Sony’s direct competitors, such as Microsoft.
This is far from the first example of a large leak from a triple-A game developer or publisher. For example, footage of Rockstar Games’ highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI made its way onto the Internet last year. There was also a relatively recent high-profile leak affecting Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher III: Wild Hunt developer CD Projekt Red. Going back decades, there was the infamous incident of leaked Half-Life 2 source code and many more examples.
The scope of this leak is enormous even by the standards of this industry, though.
It’s important to take some of this leaked information with a grain of salt, because there is no guarantee that the information leaked is up to date. Even if it’s current now, the studio’s plans could change and evolve in the coming months and years. The fact that a new Ratchet & Clank game is planned now doesn’t necessarily mean one will be released in a few years; games are canceled all the time.
