As suggested by Tom Henderson and Nick “Shpeshal Nick” Baker, a March Sony may present a new one PlayStation Showcasean event therefore larger than a simple State of Play, with several juicy news for players PS5 and PS4. A tip to be taken with a grain of salt, but in our opinion rather credible, given that there is plenty of meat in the fire, between a PlayStation VR2 still to be gutted and the much talked about Project Spartacus.
Tom Henderson says “there are a lot of things lining up” at PlayStation. And actually it is so when you think about it. Having fulfilled the commitments for the pre-launch promotional campaigns of Horizon Forbidden West and Gran Turismo 7 (out March 6), Sony could focus on presenting the future of PlayStation in the best possible way, which beyond God of War: Ragnarok it is still shrouded in mystery.
In January, the company unveiled the technical specifications of PlayStation VR2 and yesterday the first official images, so March could be the ideal month to reveal further details on the device. There are several points to discuss, mainly the price and the release date, which we expect for the end of the year. However, an event like the PlayStation Showcase we imagine it as the ideal stage to present new games dedicated to the viewer, which enhance its qualities and ensnare users, both those who have already bought the first PlayStation VR and believe in this kind of peripherals, but also who is more skeptical. This time Sony seems to have gone big, creating a viewer on paper that is very accurate in many respects and that could help the spread of this technology, at the same time differentiating the offer of the PlayStation ecosystem from that of the Xbox, which in future could be particularly important.
In this sense, one of the protagonists of a Sony event with great fanfare could be the much talked about Project Spartacus, the alleged new subscription service that could take a leading role among those offered by PS5 and PS4. There are those who speak of it as the merger of PlayStation Plus and Now in a single subscription, who instead say that it will include hundreds of old glories of the PS1, PS2 and PS3 era, resulting “a sort of Nintendo Switch Online but better”. Or maybe it’s both. It is also not to be excluded that in reality Project Spartacus is simply an enhancement, with possible rebrand, of PlayStation Now to make the service more attractive, which so far has struggled to establish itself. We saw the first possible hints of this change yesterday, with the announcement that Shadow Warrior 3 will be available to PlayStation Now subscribers at launch. This is the first case of a game that arrives in the service catalog at launch and in the future Sony could also enter into further agreements with other development houses to entice a greater number of users to subscribe.
It would not be a PlayStation Showcase without a good feast of games, the one of September last year for example lasted a good 40 minutes with about twenty trailers and gameplay videos. The most obvious is undoubtedly Hogwarts Legacy. The Avalanche Studios game has disappeared from the radar for months now, but the rumors that have been circulating for weeks speak of a new trailer and news right in March. Not only that, it seems that Warner Bros is actually ready to present the game again for some time, but that it has preferred to wait for the media storm on JK Rowling’s transphobic statements to deflate. In short, the times would seem to be ripe, considering that among other things Hogwarts Legacy was recently confirmed for 2022.
There may also be space for God of War: Ragnarok, of which maybe we will finally find out the release date, and Final Fantasy 16, given that Square Enix has promised a big reveal during the spring. At the same time, there could be more trailers and news of the games coming out in the coming months, such as Forspoken and Saints Row, and maybe some surprise announcements from PlayStation Studios, such as the much talked about remake of The Last of Us.
Parliamone is a daily opinion column that offers a starting point for discussion around the news of the day, a small editorial written by a member of the editorial team but which is not necessarily representative of the Multiplayer.it editorial line.
