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As rumours of a big week for PlayStation swirl... Sony trademarks Knack

Forget all those rumours about a rival to Xbox Game Pass, Sony has one killer trick up its sleeve: Knack.

There's a rumour going around that Sony and PlayStation will finally announce Project Spartacus – what is said to be Sony's answer to Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass – later this week.

The service, which is said to be something between PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now, may well be shown off at some point this week, if the rumours are true. It'll reportedly debut with a nice lineup of "hit games from recent years" and come in multiple tiers with the most expensive offering extended demos and the ability to stream games, too.

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Then there's also the tweet that Greg Miller put out last night, suggesting that it's going to be a massive week for Sony and for PlayStation.

But forget about all that. Because there's some other important information that's caught our eye this week: Sony officially filed a trademark for Knack in Japan.

The trademark – which was initially spotted by Gematsu – was filed in Japan on March 19.

The listing is simply for the word Knack, so at the time of writing it remains unclear whether we're going to get some sort of spruced-up PS5 collection of the games to date, a new title, a reboot, or something else entirely.

Knack was originally developed by Sony's Japan Studio, a company that was removed from Sony’s list of studios on its website in summer 2021. There were reports that the studio had been shuttered before that, too.

So, if we are staring down the barrel of a brand new Knack game, who could be developing it? Well, Japan Studio was folded into Team Asobi (the folks behind the wildly popular Astro Bot games) in 2021... so we could see the staff at that studio turn their hand to the would-be PlayStation mascot in the future.

It could be a very impressive week for Sony, then – a new platform to give its users games and something to do with Knack, all in one go? We're being spoiled.

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About the Author
Dom Peppiatt avatar

Dom Peppiatt

Editor-in-chief

Dom is a veteran video games critic with 11 years' experience in the games industry. A published author and consultant that has written for NME, Red Bull, Samsung, Xsolla, Daily Star, GamesRadar, Tech Radar, and many more. They also have a column about games and music at The Guardian.
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