PS VR Spotlight returns today, with new reveals and updates on previously announced PS VR titles. We’ll be highlighting seven games in total, so keep your eyes on our channels starting at 8 AM PDT / 4 PM BST, with updates every half hour.

And as mentioned, this is all about the games. So to manage expectations, there will be no next-gen VR related news. But in the meantime, stay tuned right here to learn more about some of the amazing PS VR games launching soon!

Last week, we finally got our first proper look at what awaits us – and Aloy – in Horizon Forbidden West. Guerrilla tantalised us with new gameplay mechanics to master, new Machines to overcome and new locations to explore. And accompanying that visual showcase was the alluring yet all-too short debut of some of the game’s soundtrack. Today, we get to linger on that score. 

Firstly, the chance to absorb four tracks from that State of Play demo in isolation, forming The Isle of Spires EP that’s just released onto streaming services – listen to it here. 

Secondly, we’re excited to reveal the composers behind the music of Horizon Forbidden West. Joris de Man, Niels van de Leest and composing duo The Flight all return from Horizon Zero Dawn, and are joined on the sequel by Oleksa Lozowchuk. 

To mark the EP’s release, and share the first details of what players should expect from them for Horizon Forbidden West, we brought the composers and Guerrilla Music Supervisor Lucas Van Tol together for a roundtable discussion. That wide-ranging chat tackles amongst other things, the challenges of building upon what went before, deciding who worked on what (“we have a lot more music than in Horizon Zero Dawn,” Van Tol explains of the necessity) and individual approaches to composing (fun fact: one composer builds their own instruments). But first, introductions:

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Getting the band back together 

Consideration for the sequel’s music began “since the moment we knew there would be [one],” jokes Van Tol. 

Guerrilla’s Music Supervisor is credited not only with defining which aspects of Horizon Forbidden West’s music each of the four composers would work on but keeping track of everything. Creating the sequel’s open world soundscape – covering but not limited to tribes, characters, enemies, locations, cues – as well as evolving it from what came before was understandably a herculean undertaking. It made sense to split and divide. Van Tol played both ringmaster and conductor, briefing and guiding the group throughout production. He also wanted a different approach to the game’s score. ”In Horizon Zero Dawn our initial focus was on locations,” he explains. “This time around we wanted to follow the story a lot more closely and create a more fluent and emotional experience, also outside of the cutscenes.”

That previous collaboration helped the studio decide the best way forward. The Flight’s Alexis Smith notes that Van Tol gained valuable insight as to each composer’s sounds and st

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This week, Head of PlayStation Studios Hermen Hulst drops in for an interview on studio development updates and much more.

Stuff We Talked About

• Horizon Forbidden West
• Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade
• Returnal
• Operation: Tango
• Destiny 2 (That’s right, Justin’s back!)
• Mass Effect Legendary Edition

The Cast

Tim Turi –  Manager, Content Communications, SIE

Sid Shuman – Senior Director, Content Communications, SIE

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Hi everybody, we hope you are all doing well and keeping healthy.

Today, we have colorful news coming to you from Team Asobi, the Tokyo-based PlayStation studio responsible for the Astro Bot series.

Following the release of Astro’s Playroom for PlayStation 5, Team Asobi is now spreading its wings and growing bigger! This is a very exciting time for the team, and we are very much looking forward to this next chapter. We wanted to take this chance to thank all of you, the PlayStation fans, for your kind words of support over the years, especially since Astro made its big debut on PlayStation 5 alongside the DualSense wireless controller.

While we are growing and challenging bigger things, our mission at heart remains the same as ever: bring you PlayStation magic, innovation and put smiles on your faces with fun, colorful games for all ages.

To go alongside this news, we are proud to show our new logo which you will see in our future productions. We took inspiration from what Team Asobi meant to us. Some of the old-timers might recognize other influences from the PlayStation early days as well!

To keep in touch, we are also launching our own social channels on Twitter and Instagram to keep you updated on all things Team Asobi! Please follow them and don’t hesitate to engage with us.  We have a million anecdotes to share about the making of our games so please come and say hi!

And in case you are not familiar with Team Asobi, let us tell you more about our origins.                                                                                    

The team was first assembled in 2012, a bit more than a year before the launch of PS4. Back then, a handful of us were working away on tech demos showcasing what the new hardware could do. We sat down one day and decided we needed a name for our team; something that would work as a reminder to us of what we believed to be the most important part in any video game: great gameplay and that second-to-second enjoyment it can provide!

In Japanese language, the word “Asobu” literally means “To Play” and so we settled on “Asobi “. Those simple five letters were a surprisingly fitting name with a good sound to it and it stuck!

Fast-forward a few years, the team is still expanding, we launched Astro Bot: Rescue Mission in 2018 and Astro’s Playroom for PS5 in 2020. And now, Team Asobi has become the newest internal studio within the PlayStation Studios family. At the heart, our philosophy revolves around that quintessential joy in play, be it through pixel-precise character controls, exploiting a cool new controller in surprising ways or packing humorous animations in every nook and cranny, this is the stuff that excites us :) 

So, who are the Asobis then? Well, since we are a PlayStation game development studio located in the cool and vibrant Tokyo, the majority of the team are Japanese. We also have several members coming from various other countries: England, Germany, France, Scotland, Korea, Spain, and Colombia. It’s impor

Hey everyone. I’m Ross, one of the designers here at Lucid Games. It’s been awesome seeing everyone diving into Destruction AllStars and smashing each other to pieces with our 17 AllStars. I’ve been having a great time jumping into the game myself and wrecking along with the community. Our first season is well underway and you’ve been capturing every second of the action with Photo Mode! I’ve had a blast seeing what you’ve been posting on social media, so much so that I had to pick out a few of my favourites to share below.

Today we’re celebrating the launch of Blitz, our brand new game mode in Destruction AllStars, and I wanted to give you all a closer look at the game mode and dive into some of our design goals and aspirations for the mode. I’ll also throw in a few cheeky tips to help give you a headstart in our new premiere game mode! (If you’re new to our arena of destruction, you can get a primer right here.)

Blitz and Glamor

Our new game mode, Blitz, is a highly competitive, multi-team version of Mayhem which uses rounds and a slightly modified scoring system to reward teamwork and precision. It encourages players to capitalise on well thought out, coordinated attacks rather than simply driving, smashing and evading. It’ll bring new skill based rewards for you to earn and show off to the community, just so they know who came out on top. We’ve been playing a lot of Blitz at Lucid for a while now and having loads of fun with it, so I really think you’re gonna have a blast.

From the ground up

When starting out with this kind of mode, we knew that we wanted to create something which uses the core game mechanics and what people enjoy about Mayhem, but create a highly competitive, intense and fast-paced game mode that rewards team focused play. To achieve this, we knew we had to inject various forms of teamplay into Blitz, whether it be understanding which team member should choose a specific AllStar, driving as a pack to hunt the same opponents or avenging the wreck of a teammate by wrecking an enemy player. Overall, we wanted to tone down some of the noise and allow for calculated, precision gameplay whilst enabling you to stay tuned in to how a game was progressing between multiple teams.

To accomplish this, we made the decision to have a maximum of 12 players in a game of Blitz. Splitting those 12 into four teams of three AllStars helped give more weight to your choice of AllStar throughout a match. Each match is split into round