PlayStation Showcase 2023: all the news from Sony’s big gaming event

On Wednesday, Sony announced perhaps its weirdest gadget in a while: Project Q, a handheld device designed solely to play games streamed from your PS5. It’s basically an 8-inch LCD screen with the two halves of a DualSense grafted to the sides, and it will be able to play games from your PS5 at up to 1080p and 60fps over Wi-Fi via Remote Play. It’s supposed to launch later this year.

That’s pretty much all Sony said about the device during its PlayStation Showcase. If you’re anything like The Verge’s newsroom, you might still have a lot of questions, so we wrote some out. (Some are less serious than others.) And let us know your questions in the comments!

In many ways, remaking Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is an obvious choice. The game is a near-universally beloved PS2 classic, one of the best stealth action games of all time, and is filled with iconic moments and set pieces. And the remake — titled Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater — is being announced at a time when audiences and critics alike have ample appetite for revisiting gaming’s past. Several of this year’s biggest and most critically acclaimed releases have been remakes and remasters, including Resident Evil 4, Dead Space, Advance Wars, and Metroid Prime. 

Remaking MGS3 feels uniquely challenging, however, because of how inseparable the Metal Gear games are from series creator Hideo Kojima, who parted ways with Konami in 2015. The events and chaotic messaging surrounding his departure made it look like a less than amicable separation, and Kojima’s name was conspicuously absent from Konami’s press release announcing its MGS3 remake. It raises the inevitable question: how good can a Metal Gear game, even if it’s a remake, be without the involvement of its singular creator?

Alan Wake 2 just got an official release date — October 17th — but you won’t be able to buy a physical copy of the game, developer Remedy Entertainment revealed in an FAQ on Wednesday. Remedy has three arguments as to why: it says that many players have shifted to only buying games digitally, not releasing the game on disc keeps the price down, and the studio didn’t want to require a separate download even if it released a disc product.

Here’s the company’s full explanation, from the FAQ:

Sony and Konami just revealed a Metal Gear Solid 3 remake, but it has a curious logo that reads Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater. While preparing our article about the announcement, I assumed that triangle symbol translated to Metal Gear Solid Delta, but when I read Kotaku’s very good piece about the news, my stomach dropped: Kotaku called the new game Metal Gear Solid Triangle: Snake Eater, and I wondered if we had made an error.

To clear this up this very important issue, I had to ask Konami’s public relations team how we should pronounce the game’s name. The answer? Delta.

At its PlayStation Showcase event, Sony revealed that Beat Saber, the hit music VR game, would be launching on Wednesday for the PlayStation VR2. We already knew that Beat Saber was in the works for Sony’s new VR headset, but the sudden launch is a surprise. If you already own Beat Saber for the original PSVR, you’ll get a free upgrade to the PSVR 2 version, according to the description in Sony’s YouTube trailer for the game. Alongside the release, Sony also revealed that you’ll be able to buy a Queen-themed music pack for the game.

Beat Saber wasn’t the only piece of VR news from the event. Sony showed off footage of the in-development VR mode for the recently released (and very good) Resident Evil 4 remake. It looks appropriately spooky, with clips of protagonist Leon Kennedy’s initial steps into the world and visit to the village. But we didn’t get a release date of any kind — the trailer ended with only a reminder that the mode is in the works. The full story mode will be available to play in the game, according to a PlayStation blog post.

Revenant Hill is the latest game from the developers behind Night in the Woods. At first glance at the game’s announcement trailer, you’d be forgiven for thinking Revenant Hill was the sequel to Night in the Woods. The cat featured bears a suspicious resemblance to one Mae Borowski, NITW’s protagonist. But according to the PlayStation blog announcing the game, Revenant Hill takes plays in the early 1900s, long before Borowski and her band of friends arrived in Possum Springs.

In Revenant Hill, you play as Twigs, a cat that’s fallen on hard times and forced to do odd jobs to pay the rent on the wet log he calls home.

PlayStation is launching its own pair of wireless earbuds. During the PlayStation Showcase on Wednesday, Sony showed off its first pair of Bluetooth-enabled buds that you can use with the PlayStation 5, PC, or with its new Project Q handheld device.

Sony says the earbuds will feature “new wireless technology developed by SIE” later this year to make them capable of delivering lossless audio with low latency. The company didn’t reveal too much about the wireless buds but says that additional details will come “in the months ahead.” While Sony already has a number of well-regarded wireless earbuds, like the Sony WF-1000XM4, Bluetooth support alone isn’t good enough to use them directly with your PS5 for gaming.

Sony shared new details about Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 at its PlayStation Showcase on Wednesday. The game’s central villain will be Kraven the Hunter — this guy — and the lengthy new gameplay footage showed off Peter Parker utilizing new powers with a symbiote suit. Suffice to say, it seems much darker than the first game. We also got a look at Miles Morales, who will be playable in the new game. The sequel doesn’t have a specific release date, but it’s launching sometime this fall.

Here’s a look at Kraven specifically:

Sony has officially confirmed it’s working on a PlayStation handheld to make it easier to play your PS5 games. It was announced during Wednesday’s PlayStation Showcase and is called Project Q.

“We will launch a dedicated device that enables you to stream any game from your PS5 console using Remote Play over Wi-Fi,” PlayStation boss Jim Ryan said during the PlayStation Showcase. “Internally known as ‘Project Q,’ it has an 8-inch HD screen and all of the buttons and features of the DualSense wireless controller.”

Bungie is reviving its Marathon IP to create a Player versus Player extraction game. It’s the long-awaited next title from Bungie that we’ve been waiting years for the Destiny and Halo creator to announce, and the Sony-owned studio did it right in the middle of today’s PlayStation Showcase.

Bungie has only dropped a teaser and website so far, but Marathon is currently in development for PS5, Xbox Series S / X, and PC with full cross-play and cross-save. Here’s how Bungie describes Marathon:

Assassin’s Creed Mirage will hit storefronts on October 12th later this year. Though the date was announced officially during today’s PlayStation Showcase, it was apparently leaked ahead of time. Japanese retailers started listing the game with a launch date of October 12th. According to a tweet from Gematsu, Japanese retailers do not use placeholder dates in game listings, only featuring a date if it’s official.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage will feature Basim Ibn Ishaq, a side character from Assassin’s Creed Vahalla, and take place in ninth-century Baghdad. The game was first announced during a Ubisoft Forward presentation last year as a part of a group of several forthcoming Assassin’s Creed games, including one for mobile.

After months of rumors, it’s finally official: Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is getting a remake. It’s got a new name: Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater. The project was confirmed during Wednesday’s PlayStation Showcase. It’s set to release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X / S, and Windows PC via Steam, according to a Konami press release.

In addition to this new game, a rerelease of the first three MGS games — Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, and Snake Eater — was revealed on Wednesday as part of a collection called Metal Gear Solid Master Collection: Volume 1. It’s scheduled to come out this autumn on PS5. The versions of Sons of Liberty and Snake Eater in this collection will be the ones from the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, Konami’s press release said.