Sony has announced that the sequel to 2018's God of War has been delayed to 2022 and that the much-anticipated game will be released on both PS5 and PS4.
Head of PlayStation Studios Herman Hulst announced the news on PlayStation.Blog in a Q&A where he discussed what's next for PlayStation Studios.
While he shared that Horizon Forbidden West is still on track to release this holiday season, God of War started "a little later," so the decision was made to push the game to 2022 to ensure it is "the amazing God of War game that we all want to play."
"So we have, currently, two very big, very narrative-driven games in development: Horizon Forbidden West and the next God of War. And for both of those, they’re frankly affected by access to performance capture and talent," Hulst said. "For Horizon, we think we are on track to release this holiday season. But that isn’t quite certain yet, and we’re working as hard as we can to confirm that to you as soon as we can.
"And for God of War, the project started a little later. So we’ve made the decision to push that game out to next year, to ensure that Santa Monica Studio can deliver the amazing God of War game that we all want to play. With these things, something’s gotta give. It cannot be the quality of our titles, and it surely won’t be the health or the wellbeing of our amazing team."
Santa Monica Studio shared a similar message on Twitter, thanking fans for "the amount of love our community has shown us" since the teaser for the next God of War aired last year. However, it wants to deliver an incredible experience while not sacrificing the safety and wellbeing of the team, and the delay was the best option to accomplish both.
"We remain focused on delivering a top-quality game while maintaining that safety and wellbeing of our team, creative partners, and families. With this in mind, we've made the decision to shift our release window to 2022." Santa Monica Studio wrote.
The Next God of War Will Be Available to the 110 Million+ PS4 Owners
Hulst continued by explaining how important it was that Sony did not abandon the more than 110 million PS4 owners, but he promised that it was still very important to have "showpieces for PS5."
"You can’t build a community of over 110 million PS4 owners and then just walk away from it, right? I think that’d be bad news for fans of PS4, and frankly not very good business," Hulst said. Where it makes sense to develop a title for both PS4 and PS5 — for Horizon Forbidden West, the next God of War, GT7 — we’ll continue looking at that. And if PS4 owners want to play that game, then they can. If they want to go on and play the PS5 version, that game will be there for them.
"That being said, it’s also very important to have showpieces for PS5, hence the development of Returnal and Ratchet that are exclusive to PS5."
PlayStation Studios' New IP Include a New Game from Days Gone's Bend Studio
Hulst also discussed how important new IP is for PlayStation Studios, which account for half of the 25 titles currently in development at PlayStation Studios.
"New IP is incredibly important to us," Hulst said. "New IP is the lifeblood of gaming. But, new IP is just one aspect of our strategy. Ultimately, I want PlayStation Studios to be fiercely daring, to take risks. I want us to continue to embrace the legacy of PlayStation, pushing the boundaries of gaming, keep making games that matter. Games that, probably, wouldn’t have been made anywhere else.
"And you know, Bend Studio is working on a very exciting new IP that they’re very, very passionate about. They’re building on the deep open-world systems that they developed with Days Gone. So I’m really happy for Bend Studio."
This news follows the report that Bend Studio's Days Gone 2 pitch was rejected, which then resulted in the studio working on this new project.
These answers and more can be heard in the full interview on the Official PlayStation Podcast, where he also discusses the importance of single-player, narrative games, how partnerships with Haven, Firewalk, Kojima Productions, and From Software are a huge focus, how Japanese games and talent remain extremely important to Sony, and how he hopes we haven't seen the last of Astro Bot.
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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.