What to expect from PlayStation in 2024 – from the PS5 Pro to a new boss-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro

What does 2024 hold in store for PS5? (Picture: Sony)

GameCentral looks forward to what the new year holds for Sony and the PS5, and what to expect in terms of games and hardware.

The new year rarely starts with a bang for video games, with the releases schedules not really getting into gear until the spring. 2024 is better than some years though, with Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown and Tekken 8 in January, and then Suicide Squad and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth in February. The latter is a PlayStation 5 exclusive, although obviously not one made by Sony themselves. In fact, the only game they currently have scheduled for 2024, that they’ve made themselves, is live service title Concord.

Scheduled is a generous term though, as Sony has only just confirmed it’s out this year, via their first marketing act of 2024: a trailer showcasing all their upcoming titles. The majority of these are multiformat, with only Rise Of The Rōnin, Helldivers 2, and Pacific Drive being console exclusives that Sony has paid for.

Officially, that is all the information we currently have about Sony’s plans for the year, although unofficially the recent Insomniac hack suggests that their Wolverine game is not due out in 2024 and so it’s currently impossible to guess what the PlayStation 5’s big Christmas title will be this year.

What is heavily rumoured, is that Sony will announce and release the PS5 Pro model this year, and that that will be the centrepiece of their Christmas plans. A mid-generation upgrade has seemed inevitable for a while now, but the question is how Sony is going to justify it.

The PS4 Pro used the promise of 4K resolution as one of its key selling points but it’s less clear how the PS5 Pro will be promoted. With the modern focus on frame rates, maybe it’ll be a promise of 60fps for more games – perhaps including the likes of GTA 6 – or maybe there won’t be any one specific feature, and it will be sold purely on the fact that it’s generally more powerful.

Trying to predict Sony at the moment, it’s always better to go with the simpler option. Fans spent all last year waiting for big announcements that never came and that’s almost certainly going to be the case for most of 2024 as well. At some point Sony will have to announce something but the idea that they’re waiting to reveal multiple major games at once, at some E3-esque event in the future, is probably not realistic.

Concord – the only live service title planned for this year (Picture: Sony)

Ultimately, the most important announcement Sony has to make this year is who their new boss is, given the imminent departure of Jim Ryan. Not that it’ll necessarily be a well-known figure but their attitude towards live service titles, and Sony’s traditional single-player games, will define the future of PlayStation for years to come.

The last few years of Ryan’s tenure saw a major pivot towards live service titles but before any of them could be released it became clear that trying to replicate the success of Fortnite and Genshin Impact wasn’t that easy after all. Much like the rush to make new MMOs in the mid-2000s, publishers have belatedly realised that there’s only limited room for successful games and they were already late to the party.

But will the new boss pivot away from live service games completely? Will Concord be an exception to the rule and the other games end up like the cancelled The Last Of Us Online? That’s impossible to say but if any decision is made to change course that won’t be felt for years to come, given how long it takes to make new video games.

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Sony’s position at the moment is unique in video games history, in that they have an unassailable lead in terms of console sales and yet they’re doing absolutely nothing else to secure that position. Given the amount of money Microsoft is spending at the moment, that theoretically makes Sony vulnerable and yet the Xbox Series X/S is so far faring no better than last gen’s Xbox One.

Is that why Sony has seemingly become complacent? Do they really have some secret masterplan waiting to be revealed? Or is the truth somewhere in the middle and after the quietness of last year they’ll slowly build up their presence again in 2024. There really is no way of knowing, but whatever they do – whether it’s nothing or a major change in direction – this year is going to be one of the most important in PlayStation history.

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