Sacred Symbols: A PlayStation Podcast

As vaguely promised only a month or two ago, PlayStation announced the first of its new burst of mobile games. Which IP are they visiting this time? None other than dormant Liverpool Studio-driven racing franchise Wipeout. The thing is, this Wipeout game isn't what any Wipeout fan is looking for... and that's the honest truth. So what's the point of migrating your products to the world's most ubiq...

It's been well over a year, but finally -- finally! -- Sony has given us some new, much-needed details concerning their upcoming slate of PlayStation 5 games. Word came by way of a tight, 40 minute presentation, and perhaps the biggest news of all was that Sony-owned developer Insomniac, already responsible for two PS5 games, will be delivering two more by 2023. First off, is Insomniac now Sony's...

It's about time! Sony has revealed that it will be conducting a 40 minute PS5-centric presentation in the coming days, and it'll be our first real, showcase-like look at PlayStation 5 content since the console launched (in fact, since long before it launched). The question is therefore this: What should we expect? God of War and Gran Turismo 7 seem like obvious choices. A Deathloop launch trailer,...

It's true: Things have been pretty slow in the world of PlayStation. Returnal and Ratchet have kept us busy enough, and we're looking forward to Deathloop, but what we really crave are some announcements, a tease of what's to come. Thankfully, some more announcements have finally arrived. For starters, Horizon: Forbidden West has a firm launch date, a new Saints Row is launching on both PS4 and PS...

In 2015, Sony quietly opened a brand-new, British first party team called Manchester Studio. Their charge? Make PSVR games. And so they did. Or, they tried to, anyway. Five years later, before even announcing their project or even leaving pre-production, the studio was shuttered, and now -- for the first time ever -- we know what they were working on and what went wrong. Their search-and-rescue vi...

These slow summer days have been suddenly interrupted by a most-tantalizing rumor: PlayStation 2's classic trilogy of Grand Theft Auto games are migrating over to PS4 and PS5, reworked and modernized (though not remade!) for a new generation. Yes, it's true that GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas are already natively playable on PlayStation 4, but in their stubbornly-old formats. Let's talk about r...

The news out of Sony-owned studio Guerrilla is bad, at least if some recent rumors are true. Horizon: Forbidden West -- once promised for both PS4 and PS5 this fall -- is likely going to come out in 2022, instead. This leaves PlayStation 5 fairly barren for the rest of the year, with only the likes of Kena and Deathloop filling in the timed-exclusive gaps. Should PlayStation fans be disappointed,...

This generation is well underway, and it's official: Sony's PlayStation 5 is 'winning' by a lot. At 10 million units sold and counting, PS5 is the fastest-selling home console ever and a testament to a clearly well-oiled corporation that launched hardware in a supply-constrained, virus-infected environment. We discuss what this huge figure (and accompanying software data) means, and whether Sony s...

It's time for you to wake up. Unsavory, international, and shadowy corporate and political interests are starting to tie themselves more and more to the gaming industry, and it's time for us to talk about how to resist. It's impossible for any of us to live truly ethical, modern economic lives -- only those living truly off-grid are doing so -- but it's incumbent on us to know what's happening, wh...

Fresh off the further reveal of the slick-looking timed-PS5 exclusive Deathloop comes word of another Bethesda-published timed exclusive that's being pushed further into the horizon. Tango Gamework's PlayStation 5 horror project Ghostwire: Tokyo has been delayed into 2022, perhaps not a huge surprise, but one worth delving into particularly when it comes to where this game fits in the PlayStation...

Sony's newest State of Play presentation gave us a glimpse at some third-party games of varying quality, Death Stranding's PS5 port, a sequel to one of PSVR's most notable adventures, and so on. We also got a deep dive into Arkane's upcoming PS5 console-exclusive Deathloop, and it looks amazing. With its Dishonored roots shining through, Deathloop is like Returnal meets Hitman. Let's chat about th...

Sony has finally announced a couple of first party acquisitions (and preemptively leaked a third), and while one target has been a very long time in coming, the other is out of left field, indicating that PlayStation is thinking more broadly about how, when, and in what fashion it gets its products into the world. Naturally, we delve deep, welcome Housemarque and Nixxes to the family... and pretty...

Strange and potentially exciting things are happening at Electronic Arts, the once-maligned super-publisher that seems intent on turning things around, at least when it comes to hardcore players' perceptions of its brand. After ruining Mass Effect, nearly running BioWare into the ground, closing down storied dev Visceral, and botching most of its exclusive run of Star Wars games, it seems EA final...

Is Hideo Kojima teasing something big? It seems like that could definitely be the case. The intrigue surrounds an unknown studio called Blue Box, a game dev no one has ever heard of named Hasan Karahman, and... well... maybe Silent Hill? We honestly have no clue, but the evidence is frankly rampant and impossible to ignore, and we go into all of it. We also discuss Bethesda's Pete Hines' words abo...

It's E3! While PlayStation has gone largely incognito -- frustrating our ability to pore over new first and second party announcements -- there's still a whole lot to talk about when it comes to its third party partners. Heck, our run-time proves it! Let's chat about a new Final Fantasy game, the official reveal of Guardians of the Galaxy, the reemergence of Elden Ring, the confirmation of a new B...

It appears PlayStation no longer believes in generations, a quick reversal from its insistence only last year that PS4 and PS5 would be separated by games, and what one console can do that the other cannot. Yet, we now know that PS5's three biggest upcoming exclusives (Horizon: Forbidden West, God of War: Ragnarok, and Gran Turismo 7) are all coming to PS4, too. Not one or two of them. All three....

We've known for quite some time now that Horizon: Zero's Dawn's long-awaited sequel was en route. We've even had a title (Forbidden West) and target platforms (PS4 and PS5) since it was first revealed in 2020. But now? Well, now we have 14 minutes of gameplay to talk about, along with a very, very conspicuous absence of a release date, or even year. So, let's jump back into Aloy's futuristic (yet...

The last week in our beloved gaming industry has been interesting, and of course we're going to delve into all the news that's fit to print (well, say) here on Sacred Symbols. Many, many people wrote in to ask us about IGN, Israel and Palestine, and the general drama surrounding all of that -- and we oblige, complete with timestamps so you can skip the politics at your leisure -- but the core of t...

Who knew Epic Games' lawsuit with Apple would be rife with so many interesting tidbits about our beloved PlayStation? Here's one piece of news: The House of Fortnite apparently offered Sony a staggering $200 million to port between four and six of its exclusives to its PC store. Sony -- at the time owners of 1.4% of Epic -- doubled-down by refusing the deal and nearly doubling its investment into...

We've waited long enough: Housemarque's newest PlayStation game has arrived. Indeed, they always seem to be there in a second party capacity at launch, whether it's with Super Stardust for PS3 and Vita, or Resogun for PS4. Yet, their newest offering -- Returnal -- is a stark departure for a team previously known only for its arcadey fare, and so the question is: Do we like it? Well, we've got a wh...

PlayStation is booming. Recent financial results from Sony prove it, countervailing the prevailing wisdom about the brand's shortcomings. The reality is stark: PlayStation 5 is the fastest-selling home console of all-time so far, even under severe supply constraints. Meanwhile, more games have now been sold for PlayStation 4 than any gaming hardware, ever, and PlayStation made nearly twice as much...

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We know it seems like everything is on fire recently, but does that feeling match reality? On the back of explosive reporting concerning Naughty Dog, Bend Studio, and an unacknowledged (by Sony) second team in San Diego, PlayStation fans are left questioning just what's going on with a company that seems more interested in smash hits, remakes, and extracting blood from a stone than trying somethin...

Sony's arch-rival Microsoft is beginning to make key moves that directly encroach on PlayStation's turf. Nailing down MLB: The Show 21 -- a game Sony itself develops -- as a day-one Game Pass offering is the ultimate insult. Worse yet, the swings are coming in hot from two directions: Their corporate enemy that wants to body you and a long-time licensing partner that appears to have zero problems...

The words are hard to type, but they must be typed nonetheless: Sony is pulling the plug on PlayStation Vita. Beginning in late August, you won't be able to buy any games anymore (though you'll still be able to download what you own). The same goes for PlayStation 3, though its ignominious date comes even sooner, in early July. Thus, we are left with more questions than answers, and a lot of emoti...