Godfall, first official PS5 title, announced at The Game Awards

Both Microsoft and Sony shared new games for their ninth-gen platforms at this year's The Game Awards. While Microsoft unveiled the Xbox Series X and Hellblade II, Sony showcased a "looter-slasher" called Godfall, slated to arrive next holiday season. 

Godfall is being developed by Counterplay Games, and will be published by Gearbox. Speaking at the Sony event, Counterplay CEO Keith Lee claimed that the game would "reinvent combat for loot-driven action RPGs," with both solo and coop gameplay. Information is, naturally thin on the ground at this point, but Lee's statements lead us to think that Godfall might be a kind of For Honor/Borderlands mashup.

Sony did not showcase actual gameplay footage, although they made clear that the cinematic on display was rendered in-engine. This draws parallels to the way that Microsoft showcased Hellblade II. Both titles look impressive, but without actual gameplay footage, it's impossible to tell whether this is what 9th-gen games will look like in action.

The one-minute gameplay snippet showed multiple armored characters, in what Lee described as a "brand new fantasy universe filled with heroic knights and mysterious magic."

We find it interesting that Microsoft decided to show off a very focused single-player experience for its Xbox Series X reveal, while Sony opted to show what looks like a new "game as a service." This is an intriguing reversal, considering that first-party single player experiences have traditionally been a strong point for Sony.