PlayStation’s State of Play has finished and Astro Bot ended up being the most talked-about game from this presentation, to the surprise of many. After Sony spent billions on their AAA games, it’s telling that the game fans are most excited about is a platformer starring some cute robot.
The trailer shown from State of Play has a lot of fans talking on social media, with fans loving how colorful and fun it looks. While the references to PlayStation properties have gotten a mixed response, it’s still cool seeing Ape Escape get referenced after all of these years.
Fans and games media personalities were quick to praise Astro Bot on social media:
Geoff Keighley of The Game Awards fame said: “Still thinking about that Astro Bot trailer.”
Devolver Digital chimed in with: “New Astro Bot will save us all.”
“Yeah, wow, Astro Bot is exactly the kind of thing I dearly missed from Sony,” tweeted John Linneman of Digital Foundry. “I’m overjoyed that they were given the chance to make it. I’m genuinely excited for it. Possible GOTY candidate if it’s as good as I’m hoping.”
Astro Bot is the sequel to Astro’s Playroom, a free game on PS5 that was also a tech demo that showed what Sony’s DualSense controller can do. Despite being a fairly short game, Astro’s Playroom was beloved by many, so a premium sequel with more content is exactly what fans want.
It will be interesting to see if this excitement leads to prominent sales, as Sony’s previous 3D platformers didn’t sell too well, despite critical acclaim. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart was a great continuation of the long-running series, even if it didn’t do anything too new or groundbreaking. Sackboy: A Big Adventure was an awesome PlayStation-style take on Super Mario 3D World, but that didn’t show in the sales charts.
Fans will be able to purchase Astro Bot later this year, on September 6. Astro’s Playroom is available now and is installed on all PlayStation 5 models, so Sony fans can check the game out now.