Though Sony has said it won’t be releasing any new instalments in major first-party franchises until next year, an Astro Bot game does seem to be on the docket.

Though PS5’s first-party lineup for the coming months does feature the likes of Rise of the Ronin, Concord, Stellar Blade, and Until Dawn, as recently revealed by Sony, it won’t be receiving any new instalments in major existing franchises until at least April 2025. Even so, even in the absence of major, flagship releases on the level of something like a God of War or a Spider-Man, it seems like the console still has some notable first-party games for players to look forward to that haven’t yet been announced.

One of those, it seems, could be a new Astro Bot game, as claimed by journalist Jeff Grubb on a recent episode of his Giant Bomb podcast, Game Mess Mornings.

“There might be new game entries in franchises that already exist, they just might not be major in PlayStation’s eyes when they’re talking to investors,” Grubb said. “They said God of War, they said Spider-Man. These are the franchises that sell 15 million copies their lifetime, or more. There might be stuff like- I’ve heard maybe Astro does happen this year. If that happens, I get why Sony’s probably not thinking, ‘that’s a major one for us’. At least not yet, hopefully they can turn it into a major one and a lot of this changes around.”

Team Asobi, the studio behind Astro Bot Rescue Mission and Astro’s Playroom has been working on a PS5 title for a while, though details on it have remained scant. In 2022, however, creative and studio director Nicolas Doucet said the developer’s next game was going to be its biggest to date. Job listings have also suggested that Team Asobi’s next game is in a “franchise for all ages”, potentially pointing at another new Astro game.