June 11, 2020, 4PM ET

The PlayStation 5 System

We finally got our first look at Sony's new console during the PlayStation 5 event on Thursday, June 11, and it looks like a significant departure from the older systems. It has a new design that makes it look a lot more like a fancy Alienware PC tower than the PlayStation brand's usual black boxes. 

Perhaps the biggest news is that the PS5 will launch with two SKUs: a regular one and a digital version. At first blush, it looks like the only difference between the two is that the digital version lacks a drive for physical media and will presumably come at a reduced cost. So far, there's no word on a price, release date (except for the end of 2020), or information on backward compatibility. This conference was mostly about showing off the physical device.

The Games

Sony came out swinging with a number of game announcements, but a few of them lacked enough gameplay to get a feel for them.

Spider-Man: Miles Morales
A sequel to the PS4's Marvel's Spider Man, Miles Morales looks to follow the titular character in his own adventures. In the comics and movie, Miles took over when Peter Parker died, but it seems more likely that Peter is just unavailable, which gives Miles his time to shine. The brief footage we saw suggested it would play very similarly to the PS4 Spider-Man, but Miles will have his iconic Venom Shock and invisibility powers to differentiate him from Peter. Perhaps the biggest surprise is that Miles Morales is set to launch alongside (or close to) the PS5 launch window of holiday 2020.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
The latest game in Insomniac's "blow up everything with increasingly improbable weapons" franchise, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart follows the dynamic duo as they are once again thrust into danger. The central gameplay mechanic appears to be portals, with Ratchet diving through portals to instantly travel across the battlefield or other worlds. There's also a hint at a potential second playable character when Clank falls through a portal and encounters what seems to be a purple female version of Ratchet.

Gran Turismo 7
Sony's famous car franchise is at it again. We got a brief glimpse at the game, but what we saw promised pretty much everything one can expect from the GT franchise: absolutely mind-blowing visuals, tons of detail, and plenty of customization. We're looking forward to hearing more about GT7 in upcoming months, as details were scarce.

Project Athia
Project Athia, the latest game from Square Enix, only gave us a slight taste of what awaited. Set in a world full of terrifying flaming monsters, the protagonist (presumably the titular Athia) has to use her magical powers to survive. There's not much else to say about it so far, as the game does not even have a title, let alone a release date.

Stray
Joining the trend of postapocalyptic dystopias that seemed to be a theme this year, Stray seems to follow a living cat that is perhaps one of the only living things in a world that's now home to emoji-faced robots. Honestly, there wasn't much more to get from the trailer than that, but the cat was cute, right?

Returnal
Returnal follows the adventures of a middle-aged astronaut who crash-lands on a planet, where she is killed by the horrifying beasts that roam the world.  She then wakes up again and crashes on the planet — again and again.  The actual gameplay appears to be some kind of third-person shooter where you battle giant monsters and beasts. Based on that concept, it seems like there will be an element of either roguelike gameplay or Dark Souls-style death, but we'll need to wait and see more before we can say for sure.

Sackboy: A Big Adventure
One of Sony's many attempts at mascots, Sackboy was the face of the LittleBigPlanet franchise. Sackboy: A Big Adventure seems to show him stepping away from player-generated levels to his own stand-alone game. The title supports four-player co-op and looks to be going for a Super Mario 3D World feel, with wacky levels designed around four players working together to complete the challenges.

Destruction Allstars
One of the other new announcements, Destruction Allstars looks like a cartoony demolition derby-style game. It made me think of Overwatch, since it has a wacky cast of cartoony characters who seek to crush, smash, and utterly brutalize one another in the ring. One interesting thing is that it seems like crashing doesn't send you out of the game, since you can have your chosen character hop out and run around the track. It even looks like stealing another player's car might be possible.

Kena: Bridge of Spirits
Kena: Bridge of Spirits is probably one of the prettiest games at the show. Designed in a Pixar style, the game follows the titular Kena as she rescues adorable little spirits from evil. The gameplay looks to be a third-person action game with a Pikmin twist, as you can have the spirits assist you in puzzles and combat. If nothing else, Kena shows how far game graphics have come for smaller titles, and hopefully the full game lives up to the promise.

Goodbye Volcano High
As far as we could tell, the preview for Goodbye Volcano High was entirely video-based. The game will follow a group of dinosaurs attending dinosaur high school and playing in a dinosaur rock band as they go through the drama of the last days of high school. It has a very Night in the Woods feel to it, but we'll have to see how the full version looks.

Oddworld: Soulstorm
Oddworld: Soulstorm, the latest game in the Oddworld franchise, looks like it's going back to its roots. Abe, the protagonist of the original game, has managed to free his enslaved people, but they are still in danger and need Abe's help to survive. The gameplay looks like a blend of combat and action, where you have to guide your people to safety while everything around them blows up. This time, it seems like Abe may finally talk.

Ghostwire: Tokyo
The game probably best known for when the chipper Ikumi Nakamura first presented it at E3, Ghostwire: Tokyo is a supernatural FPS set in a corrupted Tokyo. The monsters of Japanese horror, from faceless creatures to dress-wearing girls with long black hair, have taken over the city. It is up to the protagonist to use their powers to cleanse Tokyo of evil. The brief footage looked interesting, with intriguing monsters around every corner and magic spells instead of traditional guns. Hopefully, the final version will live up to the expectations.

Jett: The Far Shore
Jett: The Far Shore was one of the toughest games to grasp. It appears to be a game about traveling to other worlds, but truth be told, I couldn't get much more out of the trailer than that. The cartoony art style reminds me of Journey, and hopefully we'll get to see more of this unusual game in upcoming months.

Godfall
Punished by Gearbox, Godfall looks like an attempt at a loot-driven, faster-paced Dark Souls. Featuring armored soldiers with a wide variety of weapons and armor, the game capitalizes on the potential to slay giant monsters and earn even cooler weapons and armor. Hopefully, it lives up to the hype when it hits later this year.

Solar Ash
The latest game from the team behind Hyper Light Drifter, Solar Ash looks to take the ideas behind Hyper Light and bring them to the third dimension. With the same simple-but-distinctive visuals and similar-looking, fast-paced gameplay, there's a lot to be excited about, but details were scarce in the trailer.

Hitman III
The last in the current Hitman trilogy, Hitman III once again follows Agent 47 as he goes on missions to assassinate the most dangerous people in the world in some of the most well-guarded areas in existence. Once again, Agent 47 has been betrayed and is being hunted because if there's one thing we know about Agent 47, it's that he's a betrayal magnet. The brief gameplay we saw took place in the tallest skyscraper in the world in Dubai and saw Agent 47 scaling the outside and sneaking around the crowded party within.

Astro's Playroom
The mascot character for the PlayStation's controller is getting another game: Astro's Playroom. The previous title was designed to use the Move controller, but this one seems more like a platformer. Like Sackboy, it seemed to be heavily going for the Mario 3D World style, but it's difficult to say for sure until we see more.

Little Devil Inside
Little Devil Inside seems to follow the adventures of a young ninja boy as he hunts monsters both big and small through lush environments. The trailer gave the impression of an open-world, Breath of the Wild-style game, but it was tough to get a full grasp of it from the brief footage. There also seems to be another character, an old man, who lives in a modern-looking town. His relation to the main character is unknown, but judging by his appearance in full armor at one point, he may be an ally or a grave foe.

NBA 2K21
NBA 2K21, the latest game in the hit basketball franchise, will feature basketball players, hoops, and basketballs all rendered in realistic detail. That's about all the trailer gave us.

Bugsnax
In Bugsnax, you play as strange hairy animal-monsters on an island populated by sentient combinations of insect and food. When the monsters eat the bugsnax, their limbs are replaced by food. I have no idea what this game will play like, but I must give it credit for being one of the most memorable titles at the show.

Demon's Souls
While most people credit Dark Souls with popularizing the Souls-style gameplay, most of its features came from the PS3 title Demon's Souls, which was originally published in North America by Atlus, not Sony. The Demon's Souls remake looks like a complete redo from the top down, with insanely impressive updated visuals by Bluepoint, the same people responsible for the HD updates to games like Shadow of the Colossus. It's hard to say if the gameplay will see many changes, but it is awesome to get the chance to play the originator of one of the biggest franchises again.

Deathloop
The latest game from Arkane, the makers of Dishonored and Prey, Deathloop looks pretty much like what you'd get if Dishonored incentivized killing instead of avoiding enemies. You play as an assassin with a ton of cool powers who has to kill a group of targets before midnight. Unfortunately for him, an entire city and a deadly counter-assassin are out to kill him. Even more unfortunately, they succeed — a lot. Every time he dies, he returns to where he started with more knowledge and more abilities. The gameplay footage we saw looked very cool, and hopefully Arkane can keep up its streak of interesting shooters.

Resident Evil Village (RE8)
After the remakes of RE2 and RE3, it was about time for a new Resident Evil, and Resident Evil VIIIage (RE8) looks like a doozy. Returning both to the protagonist and the first-person perspective of RE7, RE8 is set in a distant snowy mountain village where Ethan pursues the series' main character, Chris Redfield, who has seemingly broken in and attacked his family. There was no sign of zombies in the trailer, but we saw monsters, witches, and what looks very much like a werewolf. Resident Evil's been on a hot streak lately, so hopefully RE8 will continue that.

Pragmata
The other new game from Capcom had such a bizarre trailer that I initially assumed Pragmata was a new game from Hideo Kojima. A man in a spacesuit ventures into what looks like an empty city, where he encounters a strange little girl and a partially holographic cat. Then a satellite crashes through the sky, and the man and girl end up on the moon. I have no idea how this game will play or what the final concept will be, but the trailer was certainly memorable.

Horizon: Forbidden West
The sequel to the excellent Horizon: Zero Dawn looks to bring the series protagonist Aloy back for a new adventure. In Horizon: Forbidden West, strange red vines are snaking through the ground and killing everything they touch. It's Aloy's job to figure out why. Her adventure will take her from snowy mountains to deserts to beneath the ocean as she heads out on a globetrotting quest. Of course, there are plenty of new robot dinosaurs to fight along the way, including mammoths and pterodactyls.