Remember PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale? It was basically Sony’s answer to Super Smash Bros, a mascot fighter with a roster that brought in the best of PlayStation, including Kratos, Nathan Drake, Sackboy, and PaRappa the Rapper.
Developed Epic Games long before the mega-popular Fortnite arrived on the scene, Sony’s 2012 brawler certainly had its fans, but was ultimately seen by most as a pale imitation of Nintendo’s iconic fighting series, with sub par combat and a roster that couldn’t really match the quality of what we were used to from Super Smash Bros.
It’s seven years later, and Sony seems to have forgotten that its first attempt at copying Super Smash Bros wasn’t exactly a success. Clearly undaunted by past failures and ready to try again, a new rumour suggests that a sequel to PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale is currently in-development and will be released as a launch title for the PS5. Yay?
The leak comes from someone claiming to be a Capcom employee who shared the information on 4Chan. Obviously, take this with an All Star sized pinch of salt, but it’s such an out-there game to get a sequel that the rumour is just crazy enough to be true.
The alleged employee claims that Capcom USA is currently developing the sequel in collaboration with Sony after the project had lingered in various stages of development at multiple times during the PS4’s life cycle.
The leak comes from a supposed Capcom employee who posted the information on 4Chan, meaning it’s hardly a verified source, but nonetheless worth paying attention to purely for the curiosity factor of such a prediction. According to this user, Capcom USA is working on the game in collaboration with Sony after the project was embarked and cancelled multiple times throughout the PS4’s life cycle.
The roster is said to include Insomniac’s version of Spider-Man, Horizon Zero Dawn’s Aloy, the older Kratos from 2018’s God of War, and even Spyro and Crash Bandicoot.
A PlayStation brawler for PS5 that in part serves as a celebration of Sony’s massive success with the PS4 could work, while adding characters like Spider-Man and Crash Bandicoot would massively boost the game’s appeal.
Whether or not this report has any truth to it remains to be seen, but if it’s done right, PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale 2 could finally be the answer to Smash Bros that Sony has been after.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.