With Uncharted 4 Delayed to 2016, What Else is Out This Year?

Hey, are you getting this weird feeling that, for Sony and Microsoft, a whole lot is hinging on E3 this year? I mean, don't get me wrong, every E3 has the opportunity to be pivotal when it comes to a platform's overall "story." Between price cuts and game announcements, these situations can turn on a dime. I guess what I'm getting at is that it doesn't really feel like either company has that much going on right now. And with Sony having very little in terms of announced products right now combined with Uncharted 4 getting bumped into 2016, I find myself wondering what the hell PlayStation 4 owners are going to be playing this holiday season. (Or, at least, what they'll be playing that you can't play anywhere else).

Obviously, it's a bad time of the year to be looking at this sort of thing. We're in the lull before E3 comes in and, theoretically, brings with it a lot of new game announcements. But even taking that into account, when it comes to Sixty-Dollar Games That Are Available On A Disc (which are the sorts of things that usually make the big splashes at something like E3, though that's changing), things feel a little slim on the Xbox One and PS4 right now. The Uncharted 4 delay means that Sony's announced-and-dated PS4 lineup seems to run out in March, when MLB 15: The Show and Bloodborne ship to stores.

Of course, Gran Turismo 7 has been mentioned as a release for sometime in 2015 or 2016... which to me sounds like 2016, if not 2017. And then there's... uh... The Last Guardian? That's still a game, right? Of course, there are more teams in the Sony system that are currently working on unannounced projects, too. (Hopefully it isn't just another God of War game).

So yes, it's a bad time to look at this list, because one would think that E3 would bring with it some actual announcements. And there are plenty of obvious perennials that haven't opened up for pre-orders or been announced yet, like EA's sports lineup or Call of Duty, which make this list look slimmer than it should be. But looking at this list makes me feel like Sony probably needs to come with the thunder during E3 and get some first-party stuff on the docket ASAP. Or maybe they're just content to let it be a third-party machine? I mean, I feel like the PS4 has the best controller in games right now, but that probably isn't enough, considering the vast majority of the other games on the platform show up on PC and/or Xbox One.

This list consists of every PS4 game that is currently listed on GameStop's calendar, dated or undated. It's obviously not perfect, but since they're a game-focused retailer, they're usually a decent indicator of what's coming up, what has a firm date, and what's still slipping around. I could go through and add more likely candidates to this list, like Call of Duty and Rock Band 4, but let's avoid additional speculation and just go with what's there for now. We can speculate and talk about informed guesses for 2015 games later.

March

• Final Fantasy Type-0 HD
• MLB 15: The Show
• Bloodborne
• Battlefield Hardline
• Resident Evil Revelations 2
• Bladestorm: Nightmare
• Borderlands: The Handsome Collection
• Toukiden: Kiwami

April

• Mortal Kombat X
• Dark Souls II
• Project CARS
• Omega Quintet
• Tropico 5

May

• Final Fantasy X-X2 HD
• The Witcher III: Wild Hunt
• Ride

June

• The Elder Scrolls Online
• Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward
• Onechanbara Z2: Chaos
• PGA Tour
• Payday 2
• LEGO Jurassic World
• Batman: Arkham Knight

July

• Godzilla
• BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma EXTEND

August

• Absolutely nothing!

September

• Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
• Mad Max

October

• Disgaea 5

November

• Nope! (Obviously this one will change as more games get announced).

March 2016

• Uncharted 4

No Date, But They'll Happily Accept Your Pre-Order Money (How Kind!)

• Dead Island 2
• Tom Clancy's The Division
• Until Dawn
• Just Cause 3
• Battleborn
• Homefront: The Revolution
• J-Stars Victory VS+
• Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 4
• One Piece Pirate Warriors 3
• Dragon Quest Heroes

The Xbox One list on GameStop looks roughly identical, but Forza Motorsport 6 and Halo 5: Guardians are on the list and stuff like Disgaea 5 and J-Stars Victory VS+ aren't there. Rise of the Tomb Raider also isn't there, but that's supposed to hit Microsoft's platforms this holiday, too. Though that certainly isn't a huge number of games, at least you can say that Halo is one of those big-ass "marquee" franchises that can at least feel like a big deal. And I guess that last Tomb Raider was popular. Meanwhile, Nintendo will keep on doing its own thing with the Wii U and 3DS, which gets increasingly exciting as time goes on. Personally, I'm pulling for Splatoon, it seemed really cool at E3 last year. Regardless of all that? It's slim pickings if you're looking for big things on the "new" consoles. I don't know about you, but all of this pushes my interest in E3 this year up a bit. Between the obvious games that haven't been announced or shown yet and the potential for actual new announcements, it should be an interesting year one way or the other. Potentially pivotal, even! Maybe we'll come out of E3 understanding why we spent all that money on new consoles, or maybe it'll be the E3 where everyone threw up their hands and said "well, guess it's time to build a living room PC."

This article brought to you by the fact that I'm already in some meetings about our E3 plans and now I officially have E3 on the brain whether I like it or not. We're planning to extend our livestream nights out a bit to handle the Bethesda press conference on Sunday night and we're hoping to find a location that's less, like, echo-y than our big-ass room from last year. We'll see how it goes.

Arkham Knight in June is what I'm looking forward to.

The Witness is out this year! When? The fuck knows, but hey it's something. I want it for PC, which it's supposed to come out for eventually. But it's something.

Bloodborne's random generated dungeon may have to to be used much more my fellow PS4 owners till Persona 5, and Uncharted arrive. :p

Though MGS5 won't be taking that long.

Also Pillars of Eternity comes out this month, if anyone is interested in Baldur's Gate style PC PRGs :D

shouldn't discount all the games that wouldn't hit a gamestop release calendar: olliolli 2, hotline miami 2, axiom verge, titan souls, amplitude etc etc.

prob a better list: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=155489581&postcount=458

I still don't understand this disparity, but it's ironic considering how many of my PS4-only friends are still waving the "I've got the console for games!" flag.

Great article Jeff... always nice to see a veteran video game journalist's view on the upcomming year.

Games... are over?

I have my eyes dead set on The Witcher. Upgraded my GPU for it specifically. I'm hoping it'll get a full playthrough by some of the guys, I know finishing long RPGs is tough when there is so much on your plates already.

MGSV-Bloodborne-The witcher 3 and Batman for me

Nobody would claim there aren't a bunch of great downloadable games coming to both consoles. But if that's practically all there is, that's kind of a problem, isn't it?

Not really when he states the article is about $60 games on a disc.

Didn't Tropico 5 come out last year? I played it last year. Maybe I'm a time traveler!?

So unless E3 brings some major announcements for this year, I'll be max prestige in Advance Warfare by the end of the year (which never happens). On the list of games that have a date, Metal Gear Solid might be my only pick. Still pretty glad though I am not owning two consoles, that seems like a real waste right now. But yeah, I really hope E3 brings it this year. If nothing else, I really wish there's some surprise announcements to get excited about.

That Final Fantasy XIV expansion looked dope, though.

Seriously, it did. Too bad I play that game on PC. Hmm... I originally wanted to buy the PS4 for Bloodborne this month, but the more I think about it, the more I realize there's literally no other next-gen exclusive I'm interested in that I can't play on my PC. I guess Street Fighter V counts since I'm not going to play that game with my friends huddled around a monitor. But they all suck at fighting games anyway so fuck 'em. Bleh.

Not really..the landscape is just changing.

@onlineatron: I'm specifically talking about games that have the footprint of something like Uncharted. "Big" games. Exclusive $60 things that say "you need to own this console." Things that make the $400 spend make sense to people who might not be as deep in it as you and I are.

The eventual point, if we give it another year or two, seems to be that those big budget things feel like they're dying off.

Remember when we were all complaining about how all the 2014 games were getting pushed back to 2015? What the fuck is even happening, video games????

Tearaway unfolded in the summer

Umm, there's that one game. You know the one I mean.

This is turning out to be a very weird generation.

Also: E3 IN THREE MONTHS!?

If Bloodborne wasn't a PS4 exclusive I'd be tempted to just save up another couple hundred bucks and buy myself a decent gaming PC to replace my current aging laptop.

• Dark Souls II
• The Elder Scrolls Online
• Tropico 5

I LOVE THESE WRITE UPS! Also thanks for keeping us updated on the E3 plans Jeff!

This list came as ordered, I was just thinking "hey, aren't there any good games coming out soon for this thing"? I played Alien and really liked it, then got Fifa for Christmas and still play that occasionally, but my PS4 is mainly used for Netflix right now. Waiting eagerly for more stuff to play.

Bummer that Uncharted got delayed, but if it means it will be a better game then it's for the best after all.

Here's hoping E3 reveals some more good games.

Last year's venue was great, clean, and free of stabbings and vermin

Sad to see all these brand new consoles with a pretty slim catalogue. At least they have Netflix / Hulu apps, I guess.

What a weird year for games, what a weird generation for games. No shortage of great indie stuff though.

gaming is dead we are finally alive

Did Persona 5 get (officially) pushed to 2016?

I respect that Jeff obviously put some thought into this, but this really seems like a waste of words to fill the gap of not having a news person. I found this article useless.

sadly no mention of Xenoblade Chronicles X again...

I'm interested in two of the dated games: Arkham Knight and (possibly) Mad Max. That's it. Yikes.

Getting kind of tired of this incessant pessimism. Things ain't all that bad, I can hardly keep up with the games coming out on consoles. I think Jeff loses sight that his perspective isn't actually all that representative of the massive majority of consumers out there, and that just because third party games are out on PC as well, that everyone will suddenly start grasping for PC's. For as far as I know, both manufacturers still own most if not all, IF NOT more first party devs than the last console generation, so I'm sure first party exclusives will be coming at some point or another.

This generation has been so strange so far. It is not like the PS4 and XONE haven't been financial successes; the PS4 has sold WAY faster than any of the systems from the previous generation over it during its first months on the market (the Wii likely beats it in the longer term). Nonetheless, The slow death of the big-budget game has been hard to ignore There is less and less being produced out there and even less that I want to actually play.

Big-budget games ("triple A", but I've never liked the term) appear to be fading away. This saddens me. I want more opportunities to throw a new, big-ass game into my PS4. While the occasional title stepped up to the plate last fall, there wasn't enough. Just look at the retail calender between now and July: its a near wasteland. While Batman, The Witcher, and co certainly seem like big releases, there just isn't very much to choose from.

Of course the indies have taken the place of many of these blockbuster games to pad out the calender. Rightfully so, too, with most innovation these days coming from these small studios/single-person teams. And yet I still feel like something is missing. I just recently built a gaming PC, and it is making me realise how little use my PS4 is to me. All the best indies come out on both. There is only one exclusive worth a damn coming out this year in Bloodborne, and I truly doubt anything new will be announced for Q4 from Sony. Times are weird, folks.

Yea, both consoles are pretty weak right now in terms of exclusives but Im a little more optimistic about MS right now. I haven't seen a single thing that has made me want a PS4. Uncharted does nothing for me anymore, Bloodborne looks boring and.....thats about all I can think of. Even though I have 0 faith in 343 making a great Halo game, the other games MS has shown seem interesting. I really liked the last Tomb Raider so that should be good. I really want to know wtf Scalebound is and want to see what Crackdown has become. Quantum Break should be good next year too. Really hope both companies impress this E3

@jeff said:

Feels like that might be more healthy for the industry as a whole in the grand scheme of things considering how we keep that those games are risky / prohibitively expensive to make.

I Assume there's gonna be another Assasins Creed and CoD around November, but man, that list sure seems weak right now.

This is gonna be Nintendos year when it comes to exclusives once again.

wow... when cobbled all together on one list, it really makes me glad i put my money towards upgrading my PC instead of either console. haven't looked back since. and this is coming from someone who played exclusively on consoles since as recent as last-gen (PS3/360).

that really sucks about Uncharted 4 being kicked all the way back to next year, though. ouch. = /

@jeff: def think that's the case. industry is going through a big shift and, in my opinion, the less stock we put in the flashy big-budget fare the better. would hope people would be drawn to things like rime, wild, and inside as much as they are battlefield hardline (barf)

It's certainly an interesting age we're living in. I imagine the big AAA developers are keep going to try to tap into the DotA and DayZ type games, because that's where people are going (and staying). However, those types of games are notoriously difficult to turn profitable if grown inorganically, far more so than some iterative action-adventure or FPS game every year. Yet it's clear those older types of games are no longer getting the sales the guys upstairs are hoping for, and there's fewer and fewer big names they can rely on for sure sales.

All in all, I'm curious to see where this all goes. I suspect we'll have more cases like EA where a giant publisher will just buy every small studio with a hit or two to their name and probably mismanage them to their collapse.

Plenty of great Indies though. Like every year for the past three or four years, my attention is almost entirely focused on them.

So Zelda or Xenoblade on Wii U doesn't count?

I can't wait to hear about these unannounced games that will make me want to buy a new console at E3 2014 2015!

@ejc93: No, it's coming out in 2015, just doesn't have a date.

@jeff: Microsoft is supposed to have Qauntum Break out this Fall but I can see that being pushed to Spring.

Thanks for writing this up Jeff.

@ejc93: It's still assumed to come out in 2015, although there hasn't even been a date put out for release in Japan. I'm keeping my expectations low for the North America release date so that I can at the very least be pleasantly surprised if the game actually does come out this year in NA (which, I'm not so sure it will).