BeamNG The automotive physics sandbox that’s been corralling more and more players on PC, BeamNG.drive, will finally hit PlayStation 5 on October 19. The team behind the game announced the release date today with a new trailer shown below, showcasing the range of experiences it offers—and the range of vehicles players are free to destroy. If you don’t know the score on BeamNG.drive, it’s based around a sophisticated soft-body physics simulation model that, for many years, surprassed what console CPUs could handle. The PS5 is, of course, not a new piece of hardware, so perhaps it took some time for the team to figure out how to bring it to the platform while ensuring an acceptable level of performance, fidelity, or both. For those of you with PS5 Pro consoles, the game will support PSSR, that system’s exclusive machine-learning upscaler that should allow for even sharper visuals. Now, Beam gives you the freedom to head to any environment you want, in any car you want, and wreak havoc—even under the gravitational forces of the moon, sun, or various planets, if you’re so inclined. Many players on PC like to mod the game with unofficial, community-developed content, though that obviously isn’t going to be standard practice on PlayStation. The developers say they’re exploring the potential for some kind of modding capability on PS5, but it certainly won’t be as extensive as what’s on PC, and it won’t be ready at launch. However, Beam does already feature a career mode, which is also still a work in progress. It offers various ways to sample the game’s scope of content and play styles, from motorsports to delivery missions to police chases, with a structure that requires you to buy and improve vehicles and manage expenses (read: money for repairs). Overtake has a solid primer on the career, for those interested. Last month, I wrote about how BeamNG.drive was accelerating in active players while Forza Horizon 6, which launched to titanic hype back in May, let off the gas since release. That’s the way things go, of course—you can’t expect any title to maintain its launch-week engagement into month six. That said, it was encouraging to see a game like Beam, which is far less suited for mainstream adoption, go toe-to-toe with a triple-A juggernaut like Horizon in raw numbers, and it’ll be interesting to observe how the PlayStation audience finds it. Wouldn’t you know that, if all goes according to plan, FH6 will also make the jump to Sony’s console before the year is out.
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