Bandai Namco Entertainment has announced Sword Art Online: Lost Song and its predecessor, SAO: Hollow Fragment, are being ported to the PlayStation 4. Additionally, Bandai Namco Entertainment America and Europe both confirmed the games will release in the West this year.
SAO: Lost Song is a direct sequel to Hollow Fragment and takes place in the fairy world of ALfheim Online. Players can spend more than 50 hours enjoying the game’s new features such as the three-character party system, Flight Mode traversal, and more. The newly-announced PS4 version will benefit from graphical upgrades from the original Japanese and Asian PlayStation 3 and Vita releases. The Western release will contain the riginal Japanese audio with subtitles in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish subtitiles.
Lost Song is set to launch this fall in North America and Europe on the PS4 and PS Vita only, both physically and digitally.
SAO: Re: Hollow Fragment is a PS4 HD remaster of the Vita game Hollow Fragment, which itself was an enhanced port of the PSP game SAO: Infinity Moment. Some items from the Vita version will be able to be transferred to the PS4 version with other previously-released Vita DLC able to be unlocked later on.
Re: Hollow Fragment will release this summer in North America and Europe as only a digital download.
Neither games are canon and feature a brand new storyline not found in the novels or anime.
Sword Art Online originated as a Japanese light novel series by Reki Kawahara about gamers trapped in a virtual-reality headset MMORPG who can only escape alive by finishing the game. The franchise rose to popularity when an anime adaptation debuted in 2012, which was followed by a second season last year.
View screenshots in our SAO: Lost Song gallery and SAO: Re: Hollow Fragement gallery and watch the trailer to see the game in action. Check out our review of the original Vita release of Hollow Fragment.