Ghost Of Yotei’s Gamble Paid Off (2025)

By James Troughton

Published May 2, 2025

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Ghost of Yotei

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Late last month, PlayStation announced that PS5 exclusive Ghost of Yotei would launch in early October, potentially positioning it against the unstoppable force that is GTA 6. It was a bold move, choosing to hold firm in a release window that so many developers have been avoiding out of fear that they would get buried under Rockstar’s shadow.

EA even admitted that it would delay Battlefield 6 if necessary, thanks to the latest Rockstar epic.

But as my colleague Andrew King wrote, the first half of the year is stacked because every other publisher is trying to avoid GTA 6, so you either throw elbows with everyone else, hoping to dodge Rockstar while paradoxically drowning in competition, or take the risk and commit to a quarter of the year that’s practically been quarantined off. PlayStation chose the latter, and while it was a gamble, it’s one that paid off.

GTA 6 has been delayed to 2026 after over a year of crickets and tumbleweeds (wait, no, that’s Red Dead), leaving the rest of 2025 ripe for the taking. We’ll no doubt see plenty of publishers rush to nail down release dates now, knowing full well they won’t have to risk standing toe-to-toe with what is bound to be one of the biggest video game launches in history, but Sony doesn’t have to worry about that. It was ahead of the curve.

Fall Is The Season Of Ghost Of Yotei, Now

The only other major release that we know is launching later this year that actually has a release date is Borderlands 4, also published by Take-Two Interactive (which was pulled forward right before the GTA 6 announcement, though Randy Pitchford denies that had anything to do with it). That means the back half of 2025 is Ghost of Yotei’s domain now — a flagship PlayStation exclusive open world epic to rival Assassin’s Creed.

The first game, an untested new IP from Sucker Punch, sold nearly ten million copies, making it one of the best-selling games on the PS4. With a fervent fan base now in waiting, the sequel could easily be one of 2025’s biggest games, and all it took to grab that conveniently empty spot was calling Rockstar on its bluff. Sure, it kept reiterating that GTA 6 would launch in 2025, but hardly anyone believed it. With no new trailer in sight, or any marketing whatsoever, those promises felt thinner and thinner by the day.

Sony either saw through the bluster (possibly with some inside help, communicating with Rockstar for the PS5 launch), or it didn’t care. I hope it’s the latter. GTA 6 is going to be huge, there’s no denying that, but I also can’t see a world where major triple-A releases such as Ghost of Yotei fail even when up against titans of the industry. Many were concerned that the Oblivion remaster would eclipse Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and yet both are thriving, and while we muse that Horizon is always overshadowed by better games, like Elden Ring and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the series sells astronomically well.

So, I hope Ghost of Yotei is a lesson to publishers that they don’t need to be so tepid when it comes to pencilling in release dates, just because Rockstar is holding up the line. Take a big swing next time, and maybe you’ll come out on top like PlayStation has.