Owning a PlayStation in 2022, be that PS5 or PS4, is going to be brilliant. The games that didn’t quite make it into 2021 are all due in the coming months – you can bet we’ve got our pre-orders for the likes of Horizon: Forbidden West in already – and the long-awaited PSVR 2 Sony VR headset is due to be released this year too, offering a vastly improved experience and considerably less cable clutter.
And this is the year when Sony finally takes on Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass, with its very own flat-fee streaming service currently codenamed Project Spartacus.
There's also official PS5 faceplate console covers incoming, some fantastic third-party accessories in the works, and the exclusives are going to come thick and fast.
Here are our PlayStation highlights for the year to come.
PlayStation in 2022: customise your PS5 and keep an eye out for restocks
2022’s going to get off to a colourful start thanks to the new PS5 console covers in Nova Pink, Starlight Blue and Galactic Purple. They’ll go on sale in January with matching DualSense controllers available too.
That’s probably it on the console hardware front, because the global semiconductor shortage is still causing chaos in the tech industry: Sony simply can’t make PS5s fast enough, which sadly means too many consoles are still ending up in the hands of scalpers. Supply issues should ease through the coming year, but we don’t think we’ll need to retire our PS5 restock tracker any time soon.
PlayStation in 2022: PSVR 2 headset
We know it’s coming in 2022; we just don’t know when or for how much, but we suspect the answers are “just before Christmas” and “quite a lot”. Sony’s PSVR 2 virtual reality headset will have OLED displays delivering a total resolution of 4,000 x 2,040 pixels, HDR and a 110-degree field of view. The new haptic controllers look more like Valve’s knuckle controllers than the Move controllers of the first-gen PSVR, it’ll connect with a single cable instead of the tortuous connections of its predecessor, and Sony has at least expressed its hope that future AAA releases will all ship with PSVR 2 support.
PlayStation in 2022: PS Plus becomes Project Spartacus, a rival to Game Pass
One of the key drivers for Sony in 2022 is going to be subscriptions: it can’t magic more semiconductors out of the air, but it can improve its services and sell more subs. According to the Motley Fool, subscriptions to PS Plus have risen from 5.8m in 2013 to 47.2 million in 2021; with a stable user base of 104 million that means a lot of PS4 and PS5 owners haven’t been persuaded to sign up yet.
That’s likely to change in 2022 with Project Spartacus, Sony’s rival to Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass: expect a similarly-sized library with regular blockbusters for a fixed monthly fee. Spartacus is expected to merge PS Plus and the much less popular PS Now into a single service for both PS4 and PS5 owners.
PlayStation 2022: next-gen games to get excited about
It almost goes without saying that we’re desperate to play Horizon: Forbidden West. Originally intended for a 2021 release, Forbidden West is now one of the most wanted PlayStation games in 2022 – and like many blockbusters it’s coming for PS4 as well as PS5.
Sony likes its exclusives, and some of 2022’s biggest games will be exclusive to PlayStation: Square Enix’s Forspoken, God of War: Ragnarok, Gran Turismo 7, Ghostwire: Tokyo, Wolverine, Spider-Man 2, Stray, Sifu and the aforementioned Horizon: Forbidden West are all on the Sony-only list this year.
That’s not all. 2022 will bring the latest in the Five Nights At Freddy’s franchise as well as Hello Neighbour 2, while action fans can look forward to Dying Light 2 and Rainbow Six Extraction. One of the most anticipated titles for PS4/PS5 is Elden Ring, a brand new RPG created in partnership with Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin.
Another book tie-in, Hogwarts Legacy, may surface in 2022: developers Avalanche Software haven’t posted any new content since September 2020 bar a brief merry Christmas message in December 2022. Many analysts believe Warner Bros delayed the game in order to distance itself from Harry Potter creator JK Rowling.
Another PR disaster should abate this year with the PS5 release of Cyberpunk 2077, which attracted controversy for all kinds of reasons but mainly because the initial release was utterly broken. You may recall the same thing happened to the same studio’s Witcher 3, which is rightly considered a classic now.
Prefer wheels to weapons? Gran Turismo 7 is due in March for PS4 and PS5 with the return of some classic circuits, and if you like both wheels and weapons we think you’ll be excited about the Saints Row reboot, due in August. We’re also expecting a remake of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.
Here’s another familiar franchise: Lego Star Wars. The Skywalker Saga, due in early 2022, enables you to play Lego versions of every single Star Wars film.
PlayStation in 2022: weird and wonderful games heading your way
Did you play Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep, the DLC for Borderlands 2? If you did, you’ll love this: it’s effectively a Borderlands game with extra spell casting and it’s going to be very, very odd indeed.
On the subject of odd, early 2022 also brings us Stray – to the best of our knowledge the first major PlayStation game where you play as a stray cat whose only friend is a drone. It looks spectacular and we can’t wait to play it.
Another odd one is Little Devil Inside, scheduled for winter 2022 after seven years in development. It’s a Zelda-ish action adventure featuring giant monsters, glowing swords and at least one old man on a toilet.
Last but not least, there’s the prequel to Beyond Good & Evil, just 18 years after the original. It’s set in a world where animals evolved to be equal to humans, and that’s about all we can tell you: Ubisoft showed some cinematic in 2017 and then again in 2018, and we’ve seen nothing since. The trailer on the website is the same one we saw at E3 2018. It looks amazing, though, and we really hope the rumoured 2022 release will happen.
