Sony shows the games planned for the PS5’s first year

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Heads up: a few days before the PlayStation 5 launch, on November 9, 2020, Sony released a video with the games planned for the console’s first year. The PS5 reached stores on November 12, 2020 in North America, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea, and a week later, on November 19, in most of the rest of the world.

Right off the bat came Sony’s two heaviest launch titles: Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, from Insomniac Games, and the Demon’s Souls remake, made by Bluepoint Games with Japan Studio. For the first half of 2021, the video pointed to Returnal, from Finland’s Housemarque, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, also from Insomniac, and Gran Turismo 7, from Polyphony Digital. Horizon Forbidden West, from Guerrilla Games, appeared for the second half. All of them had been revealed at the PS5 showcase on June 11, 2020.

What came next

The schedule didn’t survive the pandemic intact, and for those who like tracking release promises, it’s a proper mess. Returnal was due on March 19, 2021, but slipped a month and arrived on April 30, 2021; it later won Best Game at the BAFTA Games Awards and got a PC version in February 2023. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart made its deadline and came out on June 11, 2021, exactly a year after the announcement.

Gran Turismo 7 and Horizon Forbidden West slipped to 2022; in GT7’s case, because of COVID-19’s effects on development. Horizon came out on February 18, 2022 and GT7 on March 4, 2022, both also on PS4. The launch games, meanwhile, made a splash: Miles Morales passed 6.5 million units in July 2021, and Demon’s Souls sold more than 1.8 million copies.