While Sony has fostered a tradition of showcasing its biggest PlayStation mascots through a logo at the start of games it publishes, such as first-party titles on PS5 and ports on PC, the company is seemingly leaving former mascot, Sackboy, behind. Spotted by social media X user realradec, the a recent version of the PlayStation logo at the start of the Until Dawn movie is lacking the protagonist of LittleBigPlanet.
As the X post points out, while characters like Astro Boy, Ratchet, Clank, Nathan Drake, and Aloy are present, among others, Sackboy is missing. For contrast, a screenshot of the same part was posted from the 2023 movie Gran Turismo, which still included Sackboy among the other mascots.
Sony itself hasn’t made any statement about the matter. However, considering the age of the LittleBigPlanet franchise, as well as the fact that we haven’t gotten a new mainline game in the series since the PS3 days, it looks like the company is ready to leave the classic mascot behind. The last major release that featured Sackboy as a playable character was 2020 platformer Sackboy: A Big Adventure.
One of PlayStation’s most notable mascots in recent times has been Astro Bot, thanks in large part to the critical and commercial success of the 2024 platforming game. The character wasn’t successful overnight, however, as Astro Bot had also been in a pair of critically-acclaimed games before that: PlayStationVR title Astro Bot Rescue Mission, and PS5 pack-in title and technical showcase Astro’s Playroom.
Since the success of Astro Bot, head of developer Team Asobi, Nicolas Doucet, spoke about how other developers should not be scared of making smaller-scaled titles. In a talk during GDC 2025, Doucet mentioned that players these days often tend to have several games in their backlogs owing to digital distribution, and discounts provided by stores like Steam and offers like Humble Bundle.
“From the start, we were in the mindset that it’s OK to make a compact game… it’s OK to make a small game,” said Doucet. “So for us, it means that we’re making something of such scale that we can control it fully. That’s from a development standpoint. But not only that. For the players, we all know that players today have a backlog of games and cannot complete their games, so the prospect of a game you can actually complete is a really persuasive argument.”
At the same event, Doucet also spoke about some of the earlier iterations of the game Astro Bot, one of which even featured the now-iconic character getting dismembered. Ultimately, according to Doucet, the game went through 23 iterations before it was shown to top-level management.
“So, at the end of the game, Astro sacrificed himself for the team, and as the credits roll, we wanted to make a very grieving moment of rebuilding Astro,” Doucet said about an early iteration, which would require the idea of a “completely dismembered Astro, so you gained the torso without the head.”
Astro Bot is available exclusively on the PS5. Check out our review for more details. Also check out our review of the PC release of Sackboy: A Big Adventure while you’re at it for more details about the classic mascot.