Last Week In PlayStation #12 | God Of War Ragnarok Releases November 9th, PS5’s Forspoken Delayed To January 2023, And PS Plus Extra And Premium Games For July Leak

A round-up of last week’s PlayStation news.

9 min readJul 12, 2022

Hello and welcome to the twelfth edition of Last Week In PlayStation, the weekly PlayStation newsletter from platyview.com.

Publishing every Monday evening India time (early evening Central European time and late morning Pacific time), the series will round up all of last week’s PlayStation news and other happenings into one single article.

This edition will cover all PlayStation news from the 4th of July ‘2022 to the 10th of July ‘2022.

I am back from a short holiday, and just like last time, this article is a day late. I have no regrets; I was way too tired to do anything yesterday. But now that I am here, let’s skip the pleasantries and dive right in.

Here is what went down in the world of PlayStation last week.

God Of War Ragnarok Release Date Announced For 9th November 2022

Ladies and gentlemen, we finally have a date. Last week, PlayStation announced that its big holiday 2022 exclusive — God of War Ragnarok — would be launching on the 9th of November for PS4 and PS5.

This announcement comes after weeks of rumours and speculation about the game’s release date, with everything from “it’s delayed to 2023” to “it’s getting its own State of Play”. It’s well known that this announcement was originally scheduled for June 30th, but got pushed back for a still unknown reason.

Alongside this release date announceent comes, not a gameplay or even story trailer, but a cinematic trailer. Dubbed the “Father and Son CG Trailer”, it shows a ‘glimpse at some of the dangers Kratos and Atreus could find themselves up against’ in this new adventure, including Fenrir the Wolf.

In a PlayStation Blog post, developer Sony Santa Monica also reveals the game’s different editions available for purchase. Let’s run through the details.

The Standard Edition costs 70 USD on PS5 and 60 USD on PS4. A 10 USD upgrade fee can be paid to upgrade from the PS4 version to the PS5 one. There is no mention of this on the blog post, but it is safe to assume that by buying the PS5 version, you also get access to the PS4 version, as was the case with Horizon Forbidden West, Gran Turismo 7, and Spider-Man Miles Morales. We always knew the 70 USD pricing was going to be the norm moving forward for first-party games, so there is not much to talk about here.

If you buy the game before November 9th, you are buying the Launch Edition, which is essentially the same as the Standard one, except you also get access to two armour sets in-game: one for Kratos and one for Atreus.

The Digital Deluxe Edition gets you the PS4 and PS5 versions of the game, as well as a digital art book, the game’s digital soundtrack, a PS4 theme, and a PSN avatar set. If you choose to go with this edition, you also get a bunch of in-game items, from armour sets to axe grips. Staying true to its name, everything in this edition is digital.

Then we have the Collector’s Edition. In addition to all the digital goodies and in-game items from the previous edition, you get 2-inch Vanir Twins Carvings, a Dwarven Dice Set, and a 16-inch Mjolnir Replica. This edition also comes with a Steelbook case for the game, except it doesn’t have a disc inside of it. Instead, you will get a printed voucher code for the digital version of the game on PS4 and PS5.

The PS Plus Premium tier of God of War Ragnarok’s different editions is the Jotnar Edition. It comes with all the goodies from the Digital Deluxe Edition, as well as the 2-inch Vanir Twins Carvings, 16-inch Mjolnir Replica, Steelbook case, and printed voucher code. Instead of the normal Dwarven Dice Set, you get the Brok Dice Set. Big difference, am I right? On top of all that, you get a 7-inch Vinyl Record, a Pin set — comes with Falcon, Wolf, and Bear pins to represent Faye, Atreus, and Kratos-, the Legendary Draupnir Ring, and — my personal favourite — the Yggdrasil Cloth Map that shows ‘each of the Nine Realms within the branches and roots of Yggdrasil’.

All these editions will be available to pre-order from July 15th at 10 am local time. As to when we will see more of God of War Ragnarok, I have no doubt we will. All we have seen is one teaser trailer in 2020, a gameplay trailer last year, and this cinematic trailer. But whether Sony is prepping a blockbuster State of Play for the game, planning to slip it into their inevitable PlayStation Showcase 2022, or just giving us a slew of smaller trailers before its release is unknown.

But what we do know is that Ragnarok is coming on 9th November, and it’s highly unlikely it will be delayed again.

PS5 Console Exclusive Forspoken Delayed To 24th January 2023

SquareEnix has announced that the Luminous Productions developed action-RPG Forspoken has been delayed to January 24th next year on PS5 and PC. In a tweet from the game’s official handle, it is noted that this ‘strategic decision’ was a ‘result of ongoing discussions with key partners’.

All game elements are allegedly ‘complete’, with ‘development in its final polishing phase’. Luminous and SquareEnix then thank fans for their ‘continued support and patience on this journey’ and say they ‘cannot wait to share more about Forspoken.. later this summer’.

Codenamed Project Athia, the game was first revealed in June 2020. In March 2021, the game was announced to be called Forspoken. Following another trailer mid-year, the game showed up again, this time at Geoff Keighley’s Game Awards 2021 with a 24th May 2022 release date. But a few months before this date, the game was delayed to 7th October 2022. Now, again a few months before the scheduled date, the game has seen yet another delay.

I am not going to lie to you, from everything we have seen so far, I think this game looks rough. This delay into next year is probably for the best and will give the developers the time they need to smooth out the clearly visible cracks.

You can quote me on this, but I am extremely sceptical about Forspoken. Let’s see how Forspoken turns out when it launches on PS5 and PC in January next year.

PS Plus Extra And Premium Games For July Leak

First of all, this is a rumour with a capital R, U, M, O, U, and R. PushSquare reports that ResetEra user BlackBate may have leaked PS Plus Extra and Premium’s games for July. In BlackBate’s post, they note that they’ve ‘learned’ of ‘some games that are going to be added on the 19th on PS Plus Premium [and Extra]. These games are:

Stray (which we already know about)
Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade + Episode Intermission DLC
Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag
Assassin’s Creed Unity
Assassin’s Creed Rogue Remastered
Assassin’s Creed Freedom Cry
Assassin’s Creed The Ezio Collection
Saint Row IV: Re-Elected

While we must take this rumour with a grain of salt, PushSquare notes that the leaker has a decent enough track record, which includes ‘sharing details on Death Stranding Director’s Cut ahead of time, knowing about Skull and Bones’ recent re-reveal, and leaking information on a Microsoft Flight Simulator expansion before its announcement’.

If it’s true, the list isn’t that bad, considering BlackBate notes that these are only ‘some of the games’ and do not represent the full list of July’s additions. What I am worried about is FFVII Remake Intergrade. The game is a PS5 exclusive, and if its PS4 version — the base FFVII Remake — isn’t added to PS Plus Extra and Premium alongside it, it would be a real bummer.

Maybe I am just taking it personally since I only have a PS4, but it would still be weird to only add a game’s PS5 version and not its PS4 one too. Stray launches next week, and if the line-up is to be announced on its release date like we think it may be, then we should know soon enough.

Sony Interactive Entertainment To Only Lightly Feature At Tokyo Game Show 2022

Last week, Tokyo Game Show launched their website ahead of their 2022 expo on 15th September. And a quick look over at the Exhibitor List page for this year’s event will reveal that Sony and its gaming division (Sony Interactive Entertainment/PlayStation), will only lightly feature in their home country’s biggest gaming celebration.

Under the ‘General Exhibition’ category on the Exhibitor List page, one can find everyone from KONAMI to Capcom to Koei Tecmo to Bandai Namco to Square Enix. And it’s not only the Japanese publishers, even Koch Media and THQ Nordic are present, not to mention PlayStation’s biggest rival: Microsoft.

A simple Command + F search for the term Sony will bring up only two things:

Sony Gakuen Shohoku Junior College under Game School corner
Sony Interactive Entertainment under Indie game corner

The first mention of Sony is irrelevant, and the second mention of Sony is not even really PlayStation. It’s just SIE renting out space for its indie partners to show their games. For how much ever sad it is to see PlayStation skip out on the excitement and fun of such showcases, it was always expected.

Last week we got to know that E3 was returning in 2023 under the stewardship of ReedPop, and I don’t expect PlayStation to be there either.

Other Bits And Pieces:

PlayStation Indies head Shuhei Yoshida does this thing where his team reveals a new indie game every 15 minutes over on the official PlayStation Blog. This particular manoeuvre happened last week too, with 7 indies being spotlighted for PS4 and PS5. Here is a quick round-up: Retro RPG Sea of Stars from the team behind 2018-hit The Messenger was announced for PS4 and PS5 (and it’s coming next year), shadow hopping top-down adventure SCHiM was announced for PS4 and PS5 (it’s also coming next year), Massive Monster and Devolver Digital’s Cult of the Lamb comes to PS4 and PS5 on August 11th, old-school “fixed camera angle” psychological horror title Signalis comes to PS4 on October 27th, The Tomorrow Children returns when its Pheonix Edition launches on September 6th, Cursed to Golf makes a boring sport fun on August 18th for PS4 and PS5, and last year’s indie darling Inscryption is coming to PlayStation (no release date for this one just yet!). For more details on these games, click the link here.
PushSquare reports on a video from Linus Tech Tips in which ‘a PS3 development kit [was] pulled apart and showcased in all of its enormous glory’. The video also shows ‘development build footage’ of Gears of War 3, which at one time was in development for the PS3. Also shown off in the video is a PS Vite development kit; ‘the PS3 devkit emulated the final PS Vita hardware, allowing teams to run and test their titles’. The video is titled ‘I Await Sony’s Cease and Desist’, so if you are interested in its contents, you better watch it quickly before Sony eventually decides to bring down the hammer on it.

And that is all for this week’s edition of Last Week In PlayStation. I just started playing Crash Bandicoot 4 and so far it’s loads of fun. 3D platforming can be really annoying at times though. That’s enough from me then. Have a good week and I’ll see you next Monday. Bye!