Project Athia, the next game from the team behind Final Fantasy XV, will be console-exclusive to the PlayStation 5 for “at least 24 months,” a new Sony demo reel of upcoming games revealed.
Little is known about Project Athia (apparently a working title) apart from it being some sort of fantastical action game from Square Enix subsidiary Luminous Productions. But that hasn’t stopped Sony from ensuring it will only be available on consoles via the PlayStation 5 for two years. The game will also be released on PC at the same time.
This two-year period far surpasses the amount of time other games are set to remain console exclusive to PlayStation 5. Deathloop and GhostWire: Tokyo—two properties that are now technically owned by Microsoft—won’t be seen on other consoles for at least a year, while Godfall is expected to be exclusive until May 2021, six months after it first launched on PS5.
Other games coming first to Sony platforms include Goodbye Volcano High, JETT: The Far Shore, Kena: Bridge of Spirits, Little Devil Inside, Oddworld: Soulstorm, Solar Ash, and Stray, but the specific lengths of these exclusivity periods have yet to be announced. Bugsnax, which released last month, is also a timed exclusive with no info on how long that might last.
“[T]hose exclusive arrangements range from a few months to a couple of years,” PlayStation head of global marketing Eric Lempel explained earlier this year, providing a rough idea of how long some of these third-party games might be exclusive to PlayStation consoles. The inclusion of “at least” in the marketing language also indicates the possibility of extensions.
Project Athia is the latest engagement in Sony and Microsoft’s war of exclusivity on next-gen platforms, and we’re sure to see more shots fired as time goes on.