Since the release of Astro Bot last fall, PlayStation fans have been bemoaning Sony's refusal to put its money where its mouth is. Or, maybe more accurately, to put its campaigns where its cameos are. Team Asobi's fantastic platformer was chock full of callbacks to PlayStation franchises of yore, with appearances from Ape Escape, LocoRoco, Sly Cooper, Jak and Daxter, and many other series that haven't seen new installments in a decade or longer.

Some, like The Legend of Dragoon, haven't been active since the original PlayStation.

It had some fans (including myself) feeling like Sony was trying to talk out of both sides of its mouth. It could nod to these old games, from a wide variety of genres, but has increasingly focused its development efforts on an ever narrowing range of games. Sure, it made LocoRoco in the 2000s. But would anything that wasn't a third-person cinematic action title have a chance of getting off the ground in 2025?

The Return Of The Deep Cuts

Well, it seems like the answer to that question is actually yes. Andy Robinson, editor-in-chief of Video Games Chronicle said on a recent episode of VGC: The Video Game Podcast that Sony is indeed working on some new games that bring back its older IP. "Without being an insider dick, I know of a couple that they're working on, like the deep, deep-cut old IP," Robinson said. "Maybe some smaller games supplementing their big releases."

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Assuming Robinson is correct — and PlayStation CEO Herman Hulst hinted at something similar last year — this is a positive development for a number of reasons. The most obvious is that people like those older Sony characters and want to see them return in new video games. In recent generations, Sony has radically departed from the kind of approach that its competitors, especially Nintendo, have employed. Nintendo is still routinely putting out games starring characters who debuted four decades ago. Mario first appeared in a game in 1981 and he starred in multiple games in 2024. The Zelda series debuted in 1986, and returned in 2024. Metroid also debuted in 1986, and has a new game out in 2025.

And despite keeping older franchises going, Nintendo has continued to introduce new series led by new characters, like Pikmin, Advance Wars, Animal Crossing, Splatoon. Though it has left some series in the past for too long — Mother fans would like a word — the old and the new coexist in any given year's release schedule. Though Xbox has less history to draw on, its older franchises, like Halo and Gears of War, are still important to its brand.

That said, it’s ironic that Xbox's biggest success in 2024 came from adopting another company's 40-plus-year-old IP: Indiana Jones.

Bringing Out The Dead and Dormant

But in the PS4 and PS5 eras, Sony has largely abandoned those earlier games, leading to a same-y crop of third-person action games. I like many of those games, and there are exceptions to this generalisation, like Ratchet and Clank, but those exceptions prove the rule. The Last of Us series will get a half-dozen remasters and remakes before Gravity Rush gets another sequel. This is another reason that Sony returning to older IP is a good thing. Gaming shouldn't just be one thing, and the words ‘PlayStation exclusive’ increasingly bring a very specific kind of game to mind.

In addition, Robinson emphasized that these returns to older IP would be smaller in scale. Games tend to take four or five years to make now, a shift in that direction could help get the scope under control. If those more modest experiences sell well, maybe bloated development cycles will become less and less common. And maybe we'll see new games from our favorite developers every two years instead. I only have so much time left on this planet. May those years be filled with Ape Escape.

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