According to the often-correct game leaker Billbil-kun, a new Astro Bot game will be officially announced in the next few weeks. Seemingly just titled Astro Bot, the game will be released for PlayStation 5, and will be the next entry following the 2020 title Astro’s Playroom, which came pre-loaded on every PlayStation 5 console.
“Among other information we have obtained, it seems that part of the game will be playable in an environment located in the heart of a desert,” Billbil-kun wrote on Deallabs. “One of the new characters in this game would be a fennec fox in the form of a robot sharing some similarities with Astro.”
Astro’s Playroom served to show off the many features of the PlayStation 5’s DualSense controller, and many players found the platformer extremely addictive and warranting some kind of sequel. (The soundtrack was also a highlight and is available on Spotify.)
In 2021, Sony dissolved Japan Studio, causing the game’s developer Team Asobi to spin off into its own standalone studio. In the same year, the company posted a job listing suggesting that it was working on a new 3D action game. In 2022, Team Asobi said that its next title would be its “biggest to date.”
“We have a current production, and that’s going fine,” studio director Nicolas Doucet said in a 2022 interview with GamesIndustry.biz. “But we want to have another group for R&D, and we want enough in this group to explore as many areas that are interesting. And to potentially start other projects.”
“We always have this extra team on the side. Probably like 90% of the studio is on production, but there is this small pocket of people in the background that are already touching the technologies of tomorrow, or trying things with the technologies we have today, but taking them into a new direction.”
