PlayStation will announce ‘a big remake’ this Christmas, musician claims

PlayStation is set to announce a remake of a “big game” this Christmas, according to a musician who claims to be involved with its soundtrack.

Folk singer Éabha McMahon, who now performs as Ava, told Irish radio station WLR FM’s Lunchbox show on Thursday that she had recorded an Irish language theme for the game, which has yet to be revealed.

“I just recently wrote a song for a PlayStation game with Michael McGlynn,” McMahon said. “That actually happened about a year and a half ago, it was just as the pandemic hit.

“Michael got in touch and just said ‘listen, we’re writing music for a remake of a PlayStation game, and he does that a lot, he’s done a lot of writing for different games that are very well-known but I’m actually not a gamer myself.

“So he said ‘look, it’s an Irish language piece that they’re looking for’, so really what I was involved with was the lyric-writing in the Irish language, and his daughter sang on the track and his wife arranged part of the choral parts, and so did Michael. And he also worked with me on the language side of things, so it was almost like a family effort.

“For ages I wasn’t allowed to really… you don’t know what you’re writing for, it’s kind of undisclosed because they don’t want it to get out. It’s actually going to be announced at Christmas, the name of the game. I have heard of it now and I have been told, [had it] confirmed it is a big game, which is great. So it’s going to be an Irish language piece in the game, which is brilliant.”

It’s possible that the game may be Xenogears, the Square Enix game originally released on PlayStation in 1998.

Yasunori Mitsuda, a composer who worked for the Chrono, Xeno and Shadow Hearts franchises, tweeted a photo last week of McGlynn and his daughter preparing to perform music remotely.

It’s also possible, however, that McGlynn has been involved in numerous projects, and that this tweet is unrelated to the PlayStation remake.

PlayStation has no events planned for Christmas at the time of writing. The only currently known event where such an announcement may be made is the Game Awards 2021, which will be an in-person event this year and will take place on Thursday, December 9.

Michael McGlynn was the founder of Irish choral group Anúna, of which McMahon used to be a member. The group has previously performed pieces for video games, and were featured as the Voices of Hell in Diablo III.

His short film Shadows of the Lowlands was also used by Nintendo to promote Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

PlayStation recently announced it has acquired its big remake studio Bluepoint Games, the studio responsible for the updated versions of Demon’s Souls, Shadow of the Colossus and more.

Its past works also include God of War Collection, Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection and Gravity Rush Remastered.

However, speaking to IGN, Bluepoint president Marco Thrush claimed that the studio was aiming to work on original content going forward.