Developer Chokri Hammedi (blue0x1) has released EmuFive, an experimental emulator that runs PS5 games on a jailbroken PS4. The best result so far is God of War: Sons of Sparta, which apparently runs at around 40 FPS and above on a PS4 Pro. The PS5 version of Hollow Knight: Silksong boots too, though that game already has a native PS4 release. Both are 2D games, of course, and the developer notes that plenty of other games are still sluggish. EmuFive doesn't run on top of the PS4's own operating system. It's a small Linux system, installed through PS4 Multiboot and started from a GoldHEN payload.

At its core is KytyPS5, the same PS5 emulator that recently got Marvel's Wolverine to run on PC, and showed good progress in many other PS exclusive titles. Rather than emulating the PS5's processor, KytyPS5 hands the game's x86-64 code straight to the host CPU. That's an issue on the PS4, as its Jaguar cores lack the AVX2, FMA, and BMI2 extensions that Zen 2-targeted PS5 games use all over the place. Hammedi's patch gets around it by translating those instructions into older SSE4.2, AVX, and BMI1 equivalents, mostly at load time. That works, but it piles extra overhead onto a CPU that is already far slower.

Hollow Knight: Silksong was one of the most anticipated game launches of 2025, shoring up enough excitement that other indie game developers postponed launches to avoid being overshadowed, and Steam's servers crashed on launch day. Despite this, Ari Gibson, co-founder of Team Cherry, the studio behind the Hollow Knight franchise, said in a recent Bloomberg
interview that there are other things the development outfit would rather make. Team Cherry is still working on ambitious content updates for Silksong, although the studio is notorious for its long development timelines. When asked about whether the studio's next game release would be a Hollow Knight game, Gibson said that "We have said we'll go elsewhere as well. Although we've also said those experiences will still be about exploring big worlds full of weird characters and giant bosses and whatnot."

Gibson continued that "That's not to say we won't return to these Hollow Knight worlds. We do have ideas around what forms those would take. But we also don't want to be exclusively people that make Hollow Knight." But it's not all bad news for Hollow Knight fans. One of the motivations for Team Cherry's desire to pursue other universes and new characters is passion—it would open up new creative possibilities and could have an interesting effect on the storytelling or the outcome. Gibson and his Team Cherry co-founder, William Pellen, were also asked about what they thought of people modding Silksong to tweak damage, add difficulty sliders, and the response was that "the fact that people are modding it is totally fine," with Gibson going on to explain that, even though tweaking difficulty runs counter to the game's approach to problem-solving, keeping it difficult forces the developers to think creatively and create alternatives for players when impassable obstacles appear. This outlook and acceptance of the modding community is somewhat refreshing, especially compared to instances where game developers and distributors have taken down game mods and removed access to mod tools.

Welcome to the first week of the month of September, no matter if you're prepared for it or not. This week's major release is a sequel to a 2017 game, but this time the main character is a princess turned knight and it'll be available on just about every platform imaginable. The rest of this week is packed with new releases and we kick off the week with some 1920s animation inspired psychological horror, which is followed by a first person sci-fi shooter and a 3D action platformer with a rather unique looking art style. Then we get to experience hell on earth and we round the week off with some third person time travel sci-fi horror. Don't forget to check out the additional games that didn't quite make the list this week.

Hollow Knight: Silksong / This week's major release / Thursday 4 September
As the lethal hunter Hornet, adventure through a kingdom ruled by silk and song! Captured and taken to this unfamiliar world, prepare to battle mighty foes and solve ancient mysteries as you ascend on a deadly pilgrimage to the kingdom's peak. Hollow Knight: Silksong is the epic sequel to Hollow Knight, the award winning action-adventure. Journey to all-new lands, discover new powers, battle vast hordes of bugs and beasts and uncover secrets tied to your nature and your past. Steam link

The official release date for Hollow Knight: Silksong has finally been announced as September 4, 2025, and while the gaming community is buzzing with excitement over the long-awaited sequel to one of the most popular Metroidvania games of the last decade, game developers are apparently concerned. As pointed out by a recent GameSpot report, a number of indie developers have pushed back the releases of their games to avoid being drowned out by the Silksong hype. At least three game developers have publicly announced that their games will be delayed due to the imminent launch of Silksong. Faeland was meant to launch its 1.0 release, but the developer announced on Steam that "Our v1.0 launch was set for Sept 9, but with today's Silksong news we've made the tough call to postpone." Aeternum Game Studios announced on X that Aeterna Lucis would be delayed, adding that "after the announcement of Silksong, we are fully aware that our game wouldn't have the visibility it deserves." Meanwhile, Panik Arcade delayed CloverPit to September 26, adding that "Silksong is the most anticipated and wishlisted game on all of Steam and we think people will love this game and play it right at launch (including us) but that also means it will overshadow all games launching close to it."

In the days since the announcement of Silksong's release date, the original Hollow Knight has broken its previous player-count record, with SteamDB recording a new record of 23,840 concurrent players on August 22, 2025—that's 800 players more than the previous record, which was in mid-2022 at the height of the Steam Deck's popularity. It has also officially sold over 15 million copies ahead of the official launch. We saw a similar series of events play out surrounding the launch of GTA VI, which even resulted in speculation that the fourth installment of one of the biggest looter-shooter franchises to date had been delayed to avoid GTA VI hype. While the games being delayed surrounding the launch of Silksong largely seem to be indie titles, the outsized hype over Silksong, which has been in development for over seven years, has clearly been felt across the industry.

Team Cherry Games has teased a "special announcement" about Hollow Knight: Silksong for Gamescom 2025. The game developer is obviously playing things close to the chest, but it seems likely that this announcement will finally reveal the release date for the sequel to the wildly popular Hollow Knight. The teaser, posted on X at 9:32 AM CT, suggests the announcement will take place in 48 hours, meaning August 21 at around 9:30 CT (14:30 UTC). The announcement will also premiere on YouTube.

Hollow Knight: Silksong was announced as the successor to the smash-hit Metroidvania, Hollow Knight, as long ago as 2019, and the game has suffered several setbacks, with an initial planned 2023 release being pushed back indefinitely. A late 2025 release date was then confirmed by Team Cherry, more or less lending credence to the idea that this Gamescom announcement will finally reveal the actual release date for Silksong. Recent reports have also confirmed that Silksong, or at least a demo of the upcoming Metroidvania, will be playable at Gamescom.

Team Cherry first introduced Hollow Knight: Silksong back in February 2019, as a mainline sequel to the first entry (2017) in the series. Since then, the independent Australian development studio and publisher has produced a minimal amount of preview material. The last significant chunk was delivered during an Xbox 2022 presentation. Fast-forward to June (2025); many Metroidvania genre enthusiasts were hoping for some newer signs of life—potentially amid a flurry of special preview events. Pre-event SteamDB updates seemed to point to an imminent announcement of sorts. Days later, Sony's State of Play and Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest did not harbor any fresh Hollow Knight series updates.

Thankfully, yesterday's Xbox Games Showcase provided a hint of things to come. Sarah Bond (President of Xbox) discussed the status of Team Cherry's magnum opus during Microsoft's public unveiling of ASUS ROG's Xbox Ally and Ally X gaming handhelds: "the highly anticipated Hollow Knight: Silksong will be available at launch, and on Game Pass, when the Ally releases later this year." Unsurprisingly, Team Cherry did not launch a parallel promotion/hype campaign. Instead, Matthew Griffin—the team's resident PR and marketing expert—headed over to the official Hollow Knight Discord community channel, and disclosed some pleasing news: "I confirmed BEFORE Holiday—we are not tied to a console release." When pressed about a specific launch window, Griffin envisioned a pre-Christmas arrival.

Hollow Knight: Silksong's long gestation period has frustrated many Team Cherry fans. The Adelaide, Australia-based independent development and publishing house has only released one title: Hollow Knight (2017). The much-anticipated sequel was officially delayed two years ago; a "planned" H1 2023 launch window was scuppered. Since then, Metroidvania genre fanatics have pored over the slightest of new details or external insights. Team Cherry has maintained a very low profile the ensuing years, but hopes were elevated in March. At the time, Microsoft's ID@Xbox initiative boasted about their empowering (aka supplementary funding) of development on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Descenders Next, FBC: Firebreak, and "of course Hollow Knight: Silksong." Early last month, Team Cherry's PR and marketing chief—Matthew Griffin—confirmed that the team was working on versions of Silksong for Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 consoles. Aditionally, two new in-game screenshots emerged via Nintendo of Japan's official website.

Fresh signs of activity were welcomed and celebrated by the upcoming game's intended audience. More good news has turned up this week—eagle-eyed observers noticed that The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) will be previewing a playable build later this year. As disclosed within a new exhibit description: "Game Worlds transports you inside the levels of 30 unforgettable video games, from global blockbusters like World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment) to pioneer of the life simulation genre The Sims (Electronic Arts), Neopets (World of Neopia) and highly anticipated Australian title Hollow Knight: Silksong, plus more to be announced." The Melbourne-based museum could attract an unprecedented number of paying gamer tourists; playable titles will be showcased until February of next year.

Team Cherry, the indie development outfit responsible for producing smash hit 2D platformer Hollow Knight (2017), has this week announced that the sequel - Silksong - will be missing its proposed early-ish 2023 launch window. The Australian team's publishing and marketing manager Matthew Griffin confirmed via a tweet that Hollow Knight: Silksong is still a work-in-progress project: "Hey gang, just a quick update about Silksong. We had planned to release in the 1st half of 2023, but development is still continuing. We're excited by how the game is shaping up, and it's gotten quite big, so we want to take the time to make the game as good as we can."

Hollow Knight: Silksong was first revealed to the public back in 2019, with Team Cherry taking a quiet approach to the release of preview material since then. A playable demo was on show at E3 2019, but a wider internet-based public has only had access to a pair of video trailers, some screenshots and minimal written details on official sites and product pages. Silksong was initially conceived as a DLC/expansion for the base game, but the designers expanded their project's scope - thus creating a standalone and entirely new entry in the series. It seems that the development team's ambitions have grown over the years - Griffin has not confirmed a revised release date but requests that fans wait for further announcements: "Expect more details from us once we get closer to release."