PlayStation’s new strategy is going all in on games for younger players

Last week, PlayStation aired a super-sized State of Play stream that showed exactly what to expect from the PlayStation 5 in 2026 and beyond. It was an illuminating hour filled with genuine surprises, from a sequel to indie hit Kena: Bridge of Spirits to a full remake of the original God of War trilogy. But the biggest takeaway from the show wasn’t any one game. Rather, it’s that a big-picture strategy is coming into focus: PlayStation is all in on courting younger audiences.

That becomes clear when you start connecting some disparate dots. It first seemed like a push towards family-friendly games could be emerging in 2024 with the release of Astro Bot and Lego Horizon Adventures, though PlayStation didn’t follow that up with much in 2025. Now there’s much more evidence to suggest that those games were the start of a trend. Kena: Scars of Kosmora opened last week’s State of Play, a whimsical action-adventure sequel that calls back to the days of classic Sony series like Jak and Daxter. Notably, Sony is handling publishing duties for indie developer Ember Labs this time around. It’s a big investment in an IP that skews younger than many of Sony’s current heavy hitters.

Even those big players are getting an age adjustment, though. The recently revealed Horizon Hunters Gathering finds Guerrilla Games once again trying to make a Horizon game geared towards younger players. The upcoming co-op multiplayer game looks like Monster Hunter by way of Fortnite with its cheery visuals and colorful action, and certainly seems geared toward a similar audience as Lego Horizon Adventures.

Meanwhile, the infamously adult-oriented God of War series just turned into a boyhood coming-of-age story thanks to God of War Sons of Sparta. The surprise-released Metroidvania still has a bit of blood, but the brutality has been dialed down to a T-rated level for the first time ever and it’s filled with young heroes (much to the chagrin of former series director David Jaffe). Currently, there’s a sense that Sony is trying to find new ways to expand the appeal of mature, story-driven series to younger players who will grow into the mainline games soon enough.

Image: Santa Monica Studio

To understand why that’s significant, you have to go back to the earliest days of the PlayStation brand. When you heard the word PlayStation in the ‘90s, it immediately conjured images of cartoon mascots like Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon. Sony was publishing plenty of mature games like Syphon Filter — a third-person shooter powered by political intrigue — but it was very much building on the groundwork laid by Nintendo and Sega. Kids and teens were a major focus and they were being served in several ways.

PlayStation’s efforts have changed significantly over the years. As the company’s first-party publishing efforts have tightened up with fewer games per year, Sony has often focused its attention on its adult audience. We’ve seen fewer cartoon mascots and more mature, cinematic games like The Last of Us and Ghost of Yōtei. Sony was still making games for younger players before 2024 (Sackboy: A Big Adventure and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart were two of the PS5’s earliest games), but you could count them on one hand. We’re beginning to see that number tick up as Sony’s upcoming game slate is looking much more diverse than it has in years.

Image: Team Asobi/Sony Interactive Entertainment

It’s a wise strategy for a platform-holder like Sony. If your goal is to turn players into lifelong PlayStation owners, you need to get kids interested in video games at a young age. Players need to build up a literacy with the medium early so they can graduate to mechanically involved and narratively complex games like God of War Ragnarök later. (I recently praised Square Enix’s Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined for pulling that trick off with finesse.) I’m not sure if I’d be as invested in the medium today if I hadn’t been welcomed in by the likes of Crash Bandicoot growing up. Many publishers, outside of Nintendo, seemed to have forgotten that in recent years, ceding ground to juggernauts like Roblox and Fortnite.

Sony’s upcoming slate of games is a push in the right direction, and it could stand to go even further. Turning Horizon and God of War into kid- and teen-friendly games makes sense on a business level, but the PS5 could still use some original games and characters that belong to younger generations. (Astro Bot and Kena both feel like pushes towards that goal.) I want today’s kids to have their own Spyros and PaRappas. Those are the kinds of games that can inspire curiosity in players of all ages, and give them reasons to graduate to the bloody stuff later.