PS5 exclusive Ghost of Yōtei finishes development over a month before launch

Developer Sucker Punch Productions has announced that Ghost of Yōtei has gone gold as of today, August 28. That essentially means that all pre-release development work on the game has wrapped up.

This announcement comes just over a month before Ghost of Yōtei is set to release on PS5. When it’s released, it’ll be this fall’s marquee PS5-exclusive title in an otherwise light year for the platform.

Ghost of Yōtei is almost here

The game is on track to launch on October 2

“Ghost of Yōtei has officially gone gold! We’re so excited to finally have reached this milestone and can’t wait for everyone to experience the beauty of Ezo on October 2nd,” Sucker Punch Productions posted on its official Bluesky account on August 28.

As an article from Game Rant explains, the term “gone gold” is a jargon term used by the video game industry to describe the finalized version of a game that’s ready to be printed on physical discs and distributed. Essentially, as of today, the 1.0 version of Ghost of Yōtei is ready to go.

We’re now in a world where games are available digitally and can be updated after release. Sucker Punch Productions already revealed at Gamescom 2025 that it will add a multiplayer mode to Ghost of Yōtei next year.

Still, wrapping up the majority of development work on a game is a massive milestone, so studios like sharing the news ahead of launch. And while a last-minute delay was already unlikely, this is additional affirmation that Ghost of Yōtei will be ready for release on October 2.

That’s quite exciting, as Ghost of Yōtei may just be the most notable PS5 release of 2025. It has been a quieter year for first-party PS5 exclusives. Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding 2: On the Beach came out in June, the experimental multiplayer game Midnight Murder Club launches August 14, and the Chinese-developed action game Lost Soul Aside comes out tomorrow.

Those games have their own fan bases, but they are technically developed by studios that Sony does not own. Sucker Punch Productions is a direct subsidiary of Sony Interactive Entertainment, making Ghost of Yōtei a first-party game in the truest sense.

It’s also highly anticipated because it’s a spiritual follow-up to Ghost of Tsushima, a beloved PlayStation game that released in 2020. It’s a similar action-filled open-world adventure, although Ghost of Yōtei is going to be more non-linear in structure and be set on the Japanese island of Hokkaido rather than Tsushima.

If you own a PS5, it seems like Ghost of Yōtei is going to be a can’t-miss game. And the fact that Sucker Punch Productions is confidently announcing that it has gone gold over a month before launch is a good sign.