It’s that time of the year in the video game industry where things really begin to slow down in terms of news, game releases, and the like. With that in mind, I thought it would be a perfect time to explore the 2023 release calendar, and specifically in this article, I am going to dive into PlayStation’s slate of games coming to PS4, PS5, and PS VR2 in the coming year.
Sony Interactive Entertainment has been mostly elusive to this point, in terms of both announcing major titles for 2023, as well as nailing down release dates for the games that we do know are coming. So far, there is really only one “big hitter” on the docket in Spider-Man 2, while Horizon Call of the Mountain is also on the…well…horizon. Although, due to it being a VR title, it doesn’t feel like it’s measuring as high on the gaming Richter scale.
So let’s jump into this, shall we? For the purposes of this article, I am only including titles who meet one of the following criteria: a first-party PlayStation Studios game, a second-party PlayStation published exclusive game, or a third-party exclusive game (timed or otherwise). Let’s start with the titles that have confirmed release dates in 2023:
CONFIRMED
That is everything we have confirmed dates for thus far, while there are other games which have release windows, like Spider-Man 2 for instance, which just recently narrowed in on a vague Fall release timeline. So, we’ve reached the part of the exercise where I predict what I think the rest of PlayStation’s release calendar looks like for the year, based off reports and/or my own personal speculation. Here we go:
JANUARY
I feel that January is locked in, with Forspoken and Season: A letter to the future landing at the end of the month.
Confirmed for January: Forspoken, Season: A letter to the future
FEBRUARY
It would be a great month to release the open-world indie adventure game, as Sony will likely want to avoid smothering the PS VR2 with any major releases, especially considering the already stacked release schedule from third-parties during the month.
Confirmed for February: PS VR2, Horizon Call of the Mountain, The Light Brigade, The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR
MARCH
The Show 23 hasn’t even been announced yet, but like other annualized sports franchises, it is an inevitability. Recently, it was reported that the game had been rated in Brazil for the platforms listed above. My money is on a late March release date, just before the Major League Baseball season begins.
Helldivers 2 was a part of the infamous NVIDIA leak from way back, the contents of which to this point have panned out to be very accurate. Combine the fact that PlayStation has a plethora of live service titles on the way, which Sony has said includes two games by the end of March, and I think we might just get both of those in the same month (the other being The Show). A small snippet of what appeared to be an announcement trailer leaked online earlier this year, so it feels like we are getting danger close.
Revealed during a State of Play stream back in June, Eternights is a dating sim, dungeon crawling action RPG that is currently planned for a release on PS4, PS5 and PC in early 2023. Based on my previous logic, March seems like the only fit in my mind.
APRIL
This MMO action RPG was just recently announced and I am stoked to check it out. Thankfully, there is a closed beta test taking place in January, with the game launching in Early Access on PlayStation and PC in the Spring, before it releases 1.0 as a free-to-play title in the Fall. April feels right, as it would give Airship Syndicate around six months of Early Access before launching this thing into the universe.
Confirmed for April: Horizon Forbidden West - Burning Shores
MAY
There is really no good hint available right now as to when the Silent Hill 2 Remake will be gracing our PS5’s, other than Bloober Team’s president Piotr Babeno revealing back in October that the game is in the later stages of development. I’ll just go with my gut here and say May.
JUNE
This is an interesting one. It was reported last year that Sony had tasked Destruction All-Stars developer Lucid Games with creating a free-to-play reboot of the Twisted Metal franchise. However, following the poor reception of Destruction All-Stars, it was later reported that Sony had taken Lucid off of the project and handed it over to newly-acquired first-party team Firesprite Studios. In fact, Matt Southern, the director of All-Stars and various Motorstorm titles followed the Twisted Metal project – leaving his job at Lucid to continue leading development at Firesprite. Juicy! So why June? Well, if you’ll recall, Peacock has a Twisted Metal television series on the way, and it is nearly ready, as showrunner Michael Jonathan Smith announced back at the end August that filming had wrapped on the show’s first season. I believe strongly that Sony wants to marry the various media projects of their IP (which makes sense) and capitalize on their time in the zeitgeist. I have no idea when the show will release, but let’s say it spends eight months in the editing room – a May/June release window sounds feasible. Follow that with the game in June, maybe even a nice blow out at Summer Game Fest, and PlayStation just might be cooking with gas.
Originally announced all the way back in June of 2020 during the PS5 reveal event, Goodbye Volcano High is a narrative adventure game that has been delayed multiples times, most recently to Summer 2023.
Confirmed for June: Final Fantasy XVI
JULY
Crossfire: Sierra Squad was announced along with a slew of other PS VR2 games back in November. It is an arcade military shooter that appears to be exclusive to PlayStation’s next-gen VR headset, and said to be releasing in 2023. The trailer appears to feature a fair amount of gameplay, so development looks to be far enough along that 2023 seems likely. I’m just going to say July, in hopes that Sony keeps the release cadence of new PS VR2 games steady.
AUGUST
This is another dart throw at the calendar, honestly. All we have to go on in terms of release date is that it has been given a general 2023 window. Formerly known as Project Eve, Stellar Blade was first announced in 2019 for consoles and PC, but it now appears to be coming only to PS5 on console, while the PC version is in question following PlayStation’s backing of the project.
SEPTEMBER
Developer Insomniac Games just recently narrowed down the release window for the highly anticipated Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. We now know it is coming in the Fall of next year. I think it is the safest of bets for a September launch, following in the footsteps of the first game on PS4, which released in September of 2018. Insomniac is one of the few developers you can set your watch by, so I don’t expect any delays. Spider-Man 2 will be the studio’s fourth game in three years for the PS5, if you count Spider-Man Remastered (I do), which is astounding.
OCTOBER
Announced back in September, Firewall Ultra is one of my most anticipated PS VR2 games. I can’t wait to switch guns with my eyes! No release window has been given yet, but it’s been four years since the original Firewall title came to PSVR, so five years between games seems long enough, especially considering this includes what sounds like everything from the first one. Based on the small snippets of footage so far, it feels like Ultra could be PS VR2’s marquee shooter. If Sony wants to really stand behind their next headset, dropping a big shooter in the fall (and keeping the releases flowing) seems like a good move.
One of the most unique games on the entire calendar for 2023, regardless of platform, Pacific Drive was revealed earlier this year at a PlayStation State of Play stream. It was slapped with a 2023 release window, and as you can see in the trailer below, it is a spooky game. A spooky game requires a spooky release date, so I am going with October.
NOVEMBER
This is the game I am looking forward to the most next year, and we really don’t know if it is even coming in 2023. The only thing we have to work with is Naughty Dog co-president Neil Druckmann stating at Summer Game Fest earlier this year that we would learn more in 2023. We also got to see the first piece of concept art for the highly anticipated standalone multiplayer game, which we now know is set in San Francisco. There was a time when I thought this was releasing sometime around HBO’s The Last of Us television adaptation, in an effort to achieve release synergy, but that seems too soon. Instead, that role will be filled by the PC port of TLOU Part I on March 3rd. Now I am feeling that Factions (or whatever it’s called) will be PlayStation’s big holiday release, sometime in November, with no new Call of Duty (or perhaps even Battlefield) breathing down their neck. I admit that 2023 could be too soon for this game, but PlayStation appears to be serious about making this its tent pole live service title. They’ve even hired the guy who designed Fortnite’s battle pass to do the same thing for this game – and we obviously know how that worked out for Fortnite. Sony needs to strike while the iron is hot from the HBO show, and take advantage of the seemingly open holiday release window.
DECEMBER
I am absolutely the wrong person to write about anything Final Fantasy, as I am not a fan. But I do understand that this and Final Fantasy XVI in the same year is huge. Square Enix revealed in a recent Tweet that Rebirth is scheduled for Winter 2023, and December seems like a great time to cap off what is going to be a monstrous year for video games.
Whew, that was a lot, forgive me. There are a few other titles that are lingering about, but that have been missing-in-action for a good while that I decided to leave off the list for the moment. Games like Boundary, Little Devil Inside, Gran Turismo 7 VR, and others. Are they real? Who knows. I also didn’t touch much on PlayStation’s PC releases, choosing instead to focus on PlayStation proper, but on the PC front, Returnal is coming early in the year and The Last of Us Part I is dropping on March 3rd.
I’ve done my best to include everything that I could find, and that fit within my parameters above, but understand that I may have missed a title along the way. This list also doesn’t include the games we don’t know about yet, as PlayStation surely has at least one major release left up their sleeve for 2023. Regardless, if things pan out, it should be a massive year for PlayStation releases. I hope you’re ready. I hope our wallets are ready. See you on PlayStation in 2023.
