The first full year of the PS5 was a busy one, with exclusives, firmware updates, and studio acquisitions, and sustained support for the PS4 through new, cross-gen releases.
While it was a busy year for PlayStation, 2022 is looking to be even busier, as delays pushed some of Sony’s biggest exclusives – as well as major third-party releases – into the new year. There’s also a question of when PlayStation’s next-gen PSVR will be announced, and how Sony will approach events in a continually evolving and changing pandemic world. So with 2021 largely behind us, let’s look ahead to what’s in store for PlayStation in 2022.
Exclusive Games in 2022
PlayStation is synonymous with marquee exclusives, both from its suite of internal studios, which has recently expanded, as well as launch exclusives from various third-parties. 2021 was no slouch in either category, but 2022 is bringing with it some long-awaited sequels to some of PlayStation’s biggest franchises.
From PlayStation Studios teams, we’re expecting God of War Ragnarok, the follow-up to 2018’s redefinition of the long-running series; Horizon Forbidden West, the first proper sequel to Guerrilla Games’ open-world 2017 hit, and Gran Turismo 7, the next numbered entry in the racing mainstay that only saw one game through the PS4’s lifetime. All three will launch on both PS4 and PS5, ensuring that players who loved their predecessors can still play them on PS4 while everyone who’s managed to find a PS5 amid continued stock shortages and scalpers can play them on the newest hardware. We’ve gotten decent looks at all three games, but right now Ragnarok remains without a firm release date. Forbidden West is set for February 18 and Gran Turismo will hit March 4. Early 2022 will also see a remastered release of Uncharted 4 and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy for PS5, and there are of course lingering projects we know are in the works, like Naughty Dog’s upcoming multiplayer game, seemingly spun off of work on The Last of Us Part 2’s originally planned multiplayer mode, Pixelopus’ collaboration with Sony Pictures Animation, and more.
That leaves much of the calendar year open for PlayStation to surprise us with other releases, particularly after PlayStation’s acquisition spree in 2021. PlayStation added four studios during the year – Bluepoint, Housemarque, Firesprite, and Nixxes. And while some of those studios just released games and likely won’t have new projects ready for 2022, we’ll likely learn what they’re up to during any of the major PlayStation showcases next year.
2022 will also see a few console launch exclusives from third parties, like Square Enix’s big new RPG series Forspoken, coming next spring, and Ghostwire Tokyo, Tango Gameworks’ first-person adventure that will still be hitting PS5 first despite the fact the developers are now owned by Xbox. 2022 will also see indie exclusives that have been mainstays of PlayStation showcases, like the Annapurna Interactive-published Stray, and Absolver developer Sloclap’s kung-fu fighter Sifu, though it’s unclear if other indie highlights like Little Devil Inside will also hit in 2022.
Big Multiplatform Games
2021 saw a number of multiplatform third parties delay their biggest games into 2022, and while it’s certainly likely we’ll see delays into 2023, there is currently a lot scheduled for next year. Like, enough that you might need to take more than a few days off work to play everything.
Rainbow Six Extraction, Dying Light 2, Elden Ring, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, and, somehow, GTA V are all multiplatform games coming to PS4 and/or PS5 in just the first quarter of 2022. Beyond that, there are some nebulous release dates, but the list of potential heavy hitters goes on and on and on.
