E3 might be canceled this year, but the big gaming companies are forging ahead regardless—either as part of Summer Games Fest or with their own presentations and livestreams. Arguably the top dog these days is Sony, which will host what it claims to be a meaty “PlayStation Showcase” on May 24.
The show will last more than an hour, making it quite a bit longer than the usual PlayStation State of Play livestreams, which are usually 30 minutes or so. While Sony has mostly moved beyond the old industry marketing cadence of centering heavily on E3 every June, this looks to be as close to an E3 presser as Sony will offer this year.
Sony promises “a wealth of new games” for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation VR2 from a wide range of development studios. “Expect a glimpse at several new creations from PlayStation Studios, as well as spellbinding games from our third-party partners and indie creators,” a blog post announcing the event says.
Of course, the announcement didn’t say which games to expect, but we have a few educated guesses based on the expected release windows of previously announced titles. You can almost surely expect Insomniac Games’ Spider-Man 2, which is slated to be the platform’s big fall or holiday exclusive. Likewise, Insomniac is working on Wolverine for a later date, and we’ve seen almost nothing of the game to date—this could be the perfect time to show it.
It’s also just a few weeks before the expected ship date of (likely timed) PS5 exclusive Final Fantasy XVI, so another glimpse at that one is possible—though we’ve seen a lot of it already. Death Stranding 2 is a possibility, too, and Sucker Punch is known to be working on a Ghost of Tsushima sequel—though it might be too early to show gameplay from either of those.
Based on the timing, we wouldn’t be surprised to see teasers for Diablo IV and the PS5 version of Honkai: Star Rail, either. PSVR2 remasters of recent VR classics also seem likely (Beat Saber, anyone?).
As noted above, the blog post promises new IPs, too, so we’ll be curious to see what some PlayStation studios without announced titles might unveil, like Bend Studio, Bluepoint Games, or Housemarque.
The stream will start broadcasting at 4 pm ET on May 24. Sony has streamed on both YouTube and Twitch in past events of this format.