There are two types of players. One type enjoys high-octane gameplay – fluid movement, satisfying gunplay, the thrill of pure destructive chaos. On the other side of the axis are players who like to strategize. They’re driven by a need to optimize for the most efficient outcome.

What if I told you there’s a solo developer – Daniel Stubbington – who decided to make a game for someone who has both of those in them? A roguelite shooter with fluid, fast-paced movement, where survival means mastering an environmental destruction system and combining it with a weapon modding system deep enough to create synergies crazy enough to make even the developer gasp?

That game is Void/Breaker. And it’s coming to PS5 – we think this is going to be the best way to play it.

What’s changed since we announced the PS5 version?

The arsenal has grown. To the Pistol, Assault Rifle, and a Shotgun, we’ve added the SMG and the Sniper Rifle (Daniel’s own personal favourite). These weapons are the archetypes, and each one has its own character and that’s where the gun modification system comes in place.

Every weapon has its own grid, and into that grid you place modules – weapon mods, ability mods, fire mode mods, melee mods. The modules aren’t isolated upgrades. They interact with each other, sitting next to one another on the grid to form combinations that are often more powerful than the sum of their parts. A mod that freezes enemies. Another that guarantees a critical hit against frozen targets. A proximity mine that deploys every time you slide. Some modules even expand the grid itself, unlocking more space. Stack the right things in the right place, and you’ve built something that carves through a room before your brain has caught up with what just happened.

Free Update 4 releases alongside Doom: The Dark Ages | Revelations on July 7, allowing all PlayStation 5 Pro players a new way to experience idTech8’s vision of medieval Hell with the advanced version of PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR). This upgraded version of PSSR, rolled out on PS5 Pro earlier this year, means players can jump straight into the cleanest image we can deliver on the platform.

The Doom Slayer moves fast, and that is exactly why image reconstruction matters. A still screenshot can show sharp armor edges, icy cliff faces, weapon silhouettes and distant demons, but the real test is what happens when the player is sprinting, turning, parrying, Shield-Sawing and filling the screen with particles. PSSR uses machine learning reconstruction to build a higher quality image from the frame idTech8 renders, using information such as motion, depth, exposure and sub-pixel sampling to keep the final picture sharper and more stable.

In practical terms, the image feels cleaner. Fine details that may shimmer with traditional temporal upscaling, such as snow patterns, broken stone, chains, spikes, sparks and thin geometry, hold together more consistently. The result is a sharper and cleaner image, even in motion.

The supplied image pairs are meant to be read less as a color-grading comparison and more as a clarity comparison. Look at the places where the scene has many small shapes competing for attention: cliff edges, weapon geometry, snow, sparks and distant enemies. PSSR’s value is that it keeps more of that information coherent from frame to frame, not just in a paused image.

PSSR gives idTech8 an enhanced reconstruction path for Doom: The Dark Ages | Revelations on PlayStation 5 Pro. The game is constantly pushing large combat spaces, dense effects, high octane combat, and a lot of fine surface detail, so stability matters as much as sharpness. With PSSR, idTech8 can preserve more of that detail in motion while maintaining the performance and gameplay feel players expect from DOOM.

idTech8 was built to scale across a wide range of hardware while keeping the things that make Doom feel like Doom. Responsive input, high framerate action, large battlefields, rich materials, dynamic physically based rendering (PBR) lighting and shadows, blistering particles, and a renderer that can react quickly to whatever the player does next. Adding PSSR to that pipeline lets us take advantage of the PlayStation 5 Pro’s dedicated machine learning reconstruction path while continuing to lean on idTech8’s dynamic resolution and temporal data.

It is extremely important because Doom: The Dark Ages is full of high frequency detail. The Slayer’s armor has scratches, grooves, and bright highlights. The world is packed with jagged silhouettes, layered

Since Grand Theft Auto first arrived on the original PlayStation in 1997, the series has defined generations of play. We know players are excited for Grand Theft Auto VI, which heads to the state of Leonida — home to the neon-soaked streets of Vice City and beyond, in the biggest, most expansive evolution of the series yet.  

Thanks to the close partnership between Sony Interactive Entertainment and Rockstar Games, Grand Theft Auto VI will play best on PS5 by taking advantage of PS5’s immersive features to deliver a deeply engaging single-player experience when it launches on November 19.

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Hi everyone! On behalf of our studio Undercoders, and ahead of the game’s launch on July 15, we’re thrilled to give you an exclusive in-depth look at the first boss of Denshattack!

Denshattack! is a frenetic trick-based action game where you kickflip, ollie, and grind… as a train! Set in a colorful dystopian version of Japan, you must rack up points, complete objectives, and race rivals to become the best Denshattacker of all time.

We took inspiration from some of our favorite extreme-sports series, such as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and SSX, and combined them with the energy of classic arcade hits and the fascinating Y2K, colorful, cel-shaded aesthetics seen in games like Jet Set Radio or Auto Modellista.

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Denshattack!’s world is built around outsiders

Denshattack! takes place in a future version of Japan where a climate catastrophe has left the rich untouchable inside their air-purifying domes, while everyone else is forced to survive in the undomed wastelands. A rebellious movement known as Denshattack has reclaimed the abandoned legacy railroad tracks, using them to fight for recognition in underground duels of speed, tricks, and technique.

Emi, a young but skilled ramen delivery girl, discovers Denshattack when she crosses paths with a journalist and sets off on an intense journey of discovery, growth, and challenge. From the southern lands of Kyushu to the freezing north of Hokkaido, she will need to make her way across Japan, crossing the ruins of the once-powerful railway network, meeting outcasts, learning new techniques, improving her skills, and battling local gang leaders.

Email us at PSPodcast@sony.com!

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Hey, everybody! Sid, Tim, and I are back this week to discuss some new details on upcoming games. But since it’s a quieter week, we take the opportunity  to dive into the team’s latest gaming adventures and triumphs, including 007 First Light, Mina The Hollower, and Overwatch.

Stuff We Talked About

• Next week’s release highlights:
  • Dead or Alive 6 Last Round | PS5
  • Abyssus | PS5
    
    
    
• Assassin’s Creed Shadows update — The final update for the latest Assassin’s game is now live. Test your skills in the Animus-bending endgame content. These new challenges remix the game in fantastical ways and will require a steady hand and top-tier builds.

• The Planet Crafter coming to PS5 —  Survive and thrive on July 21 in this cozy co-op survival game that alleviates the pressure and lets players enjoy terraforming and creating a life on a deserted planet.

• Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok —  See what you can expect from the massive expansion coming to the PS5 on July 9. Get the inner workings of the updated battle system featuring dynamic character synergy power-ups, summon system, and more in our hands-on report.

The Cast

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Last week, we sent you to Carcosa to try out the newly released Saros Photo Mode using #PSshare #PSBlog. Here are this week’s highlights:

MdeavorVP shares Arjun dashing to the side

thwippip shares Arjun atop a ruined landscape on Carcosa

dougsvest shares Arjun sending a red blast to an enemy 

 l2.focus shares Arjun standing in front of The Constant

y2que shares Arjun posed with his weapons

vp_louie shares an onslaught of blue enemy orbs

Search #PSshare #PSBlog on Twitter or Instagram to see more entries to this week’s theme, or be inspired by other great games featuring Photo Mode. Want to be featured in the next Share of the Week?

THEME: Saros – Arjun Devraj
SUBMIT BY: 11:59 PM PT on June 24, 2026 

Next week, share portraits of Arjun as he explores the corrupted world of Saros. Use #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured.

Set to touch down on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 on Thursday, July 9, Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok is a massive new expansion built to significantly evolve the high-flying action RPG that first captivated players in 2024.

At a recent press event, we had the chance to experience the new additions coming to Endless Ragnarok firsthand through an exclusive developer presentation and an early hands-on gameplay session.

For newcomer captains eager to take to the skies, a playable demo of the main Granblue Fantasy: Relink title is now available on PlayStation Store.

Dynamic character synergy power-up the evolved battle System

Endless Ragnarok injects a wealth of new content into the experience, introducing an all-new story arc, new playable characters, the game-changing Summon battle mechanic, a punishing new quest difficulty, the Master Trait progression tree, and a dedicated single-player endgame mode called the Conflux.

The expansion adds six fan-favorite faces to the playable roster: Gallanza, Maglielle, Beatrix, Eustace, Fraux, and Fediel. In addition to these allies, players will square off against formidable new skybound threats, including iconic bosses like Beelzebub and The World.

The new Summon system unleashes fresh tactical depth and spectacle

The crown jewel of Endless Ragnarok’s new mechanics is undoubtedly the Summon system. By equipping summons, earned as you progress through the narrative, you can call upon various characters during battle and take control of them. Because your character gains complete invincibility while a summon is active, this mechanic works beautifully not just as a devastating offensive push, but as a clutch counter against a boss’s most lethal attacks. With a diverse lineup of summons offering specialized roles in offense, crowd control, and support, your tactical options have never been broader.

The visual spectacle reaches a fever pitch with the introduction of Primal Burst. When your party performs a full chain of Skybound Arts under specific conditions, Lyria will unleash a powerful follow-up attack through a summon.

Battles heat up under the punishing new Chaos difficulty

For our hands-on session, we booted up a save file positioned right at the opening act of the Endless Ragnarok storyline. The moment the curtain rises on this new chapter, the quest counter unlocks its highest, most unforgiving difficulty rank: Chaos. In a terrifying show of force, even the very first quest—which functions as a tutorial for the expansion’s mechanics—plunges you straight into Chaos-level danger. Quests in this tier feature merciless new adversaries, like the apocalyptic beasts ragnalia, and bosses will aggressively utilize a terrifying, unique ability known as EX Burst.

When a boss enemy’s body radiates a distinct purple aura, it is your cue that an EX Burst is imminent. Facing these catastrophic attacks for the first time brings an incredible amount of tension. However, reading the telegraphs, d

Five years ago, we wrote about how the visual effects in Returnal came to life, including the real-time voxeliser that dissolved Phrike into volumetric fog. If you haven’t read it, that post is a good companion to this one.

This is how that story continues.

With Saros, we didn’t just extend what we’d built for Returnal. We stepped back, looked at thirty years of accumulated engine development, and rebuilt it as a unified framework: Graphite.

What we had, and why we changed it

Our proprietary particle engine, NGP (Next-Gen Particles), started as a prototype for Resogun in 2013 and grew with every game since, all the way to Returnal. By SAROS, NGP was mature, but it was also a product of twelve years of incremental decisions, each one made in the context of a specific, isolated game.

Then something else changed: us. Joining PlayStation Studios meant delivering experiences at the level our players expect, and our tools, and the names we’d given them, no longer matched the studio we were becoming.

Enter Graphite. It brings GPU simulation, rendering, tooling, and DCC integration under one architecture, built directly for PlayStation hardware. NGP didn’t disappear, it became part of Graphite, evolved and more capable than ever.

Every Housemarque game has a visual identity players recognise immediately. Graphite is what makes that possible.

And what it actually does, frame by frame, is best explained by the incredible people who built it:

Housemarque Graphics Architect Sharman Jagadeesan and Senior Graphics Programmer Konsta Toivanen will walk you through the volumetric fog in Saros: how it evolved from Returnal, and the two systems we built to make Carcosa’s atmosphere feel alive.

Risto Jankkila (VFX Architect) will explain how we extended Graphite with data from Houdini, including a full breakdown of the player spawn sequence.

Volumetric fog

Fog

Hello! I’m Amélie from Miju Games. We’re so excited for you to finally get to try our survival game The Planet Crafter when it launches on PS5 next month. 

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The Planet Crafter is unlike many of the survival games you’ve played in the past. When we were designing it, we sought to make a chill, non-violent survival experience. The Planet Crafter will still challenge you. The player has to carefully manage needs like oxygen, food, and water; especially early in the game, you can push your limits too far and discover that there’s a fatal result to that.

But this isn’t a game with jump scares and monsters. There’s nothing to dread behind that boulder or in the depths of that cave. But there is wonder. We’ve made some big worlds for you to explore, and secrets to uncover. The planets and moons you will find are evolving as you start the long journey to terraform them.

When you build heat pumps and drill into a planet’s core to raise the atmospheric pressure and temperature, you’ll find that the changes are more than just cosmetic. Maybe a glacier has melted, revealing a new valley you couldn’t access before. When life starts to take root in your world, perhaps you’ll notice trees growing that provide a bridge to a new location. The Planet Crafter is not a violent game, but we promise that it is full of adventure.

One point of inspiration for us when creating The Planet Crafter surprises people when we tell them. We’ve always appreciated idle games, and you’ll find some of that DNA in our game. When you build terraforming machines they keep operating as long as your grid has power. You’re always making progress towards that next terraforming milestone. We think that’s a great way of encouraging you to explore.

Let the machines do their thing while you go hunt for relics from a lost previous expe

Assassin’s Creed Shadows will launch its final update on June 16, featuring a final story quest which sees Naoe and Yasuke face off against a mysterious pair of Templars and includes a few narrative connections to the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced. Plus, a whole new endgame feature called Domains will bring new ways for players to test their skills and builds in the ultimate arena. We sat down with Associate Game Director Simon Lemay-Comtois to dig into what Domains is and how it’s designed to break your beloved gear builds.

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What is Domains?

Simon: Domains is a new Animus-bending activity that remixes some parts of Shadows and puts them into a very different, more fantastical context. It’s basically the final exam for Shadows players who love the RPG elements of the game.

It features five maps, known as Domains, and each time you play there will be different modifiers thrown in. You’ll need to switch up your build to suit the map, the challenges, and the modifiers.

What kinds of challenges can players expect?

Simon: Killing the Daishos in each map will unlock the final boss arena where you will take on one of three corrupted, Animus-altered boss fights, all while dealing with the modifiers. The harder the difficulty, the more modifiers you’ll have to deal with at once, and the more negative modifiers you are likely to get.

For example, in the easier challenges maybe you’ll get a health boost, but as you progress the deck becomes stacked against you. We also have Animus Exploits which you can use to nullify some of those modifiers, but if your build and skills aren’t on point, then you’re still going to have a rough time.

Are builds unique to Domains?

Simon: Builds carry over from the main game and anything you create in Domains will be usable there too, since it uses the same interface. The Animus Exploits can’t be used anywhere else, but equipment that you already have will be accessible in D